?? This chapter is also available as a full-cast audiobook and movie - see author's note above.

  Meanwhile... ACROSS TOWN... or the equivalent of ACROSS TOWN, where omnipotent deities are concerned... Henrietta Millicent God took another sip of her drink, triggering a supernova in a galaxy that even she might never care existed!

  HMG had been pretty sick of being the supreme god of the known universe for a good long while. She was experiencing the kind of existential fatigue that came from having personally witnessed every possible permutation of every possible species doing every possible thing, most of which involved eating, reproducing and finding increasingly creative ways to destroy themselves.

  It had all seemed like a bit of a LARK when she'd just been PLAYING god after building that celestial blender out of household objects and faith. But then that whole BIG BANG business had accidentally gone off in that annexed kitchenette on the sunny side of her old bungalow in South Islington and… well… it had been a LONG time before she'd had anyone but her sister, Juliette, and her idiot housemate, Paul, to talk to.

  She pressed her temples against the throb of billions of prayers, pleas and cosmic emergencies. Being on vacation meant ignoring them, but millennia of habit made that roughly as easy as forgetting to breathe. Though breathing was optional these days, yet another perk of immortality she was completely over.

  She sighed and stared across the pool. She really did need to switch off for a few hours, but the constant cosmic thinks kept interrupting her own thinks. Thankfully, they were at least a little less foul-mouthed since she'd introduced the universal swear ban.

  She adjusted her pocketless yellow dressing gown with its gold buttons, glinting with tiny Goldilocks galaxies, as the fluorescent clouds of the Last Resort's faux environmental floomfield sparkled overhead.

  She settled back into her hoverbananalounge, watching the floating service drones dart between guests, occasionally glitching to create drinks that shouldn't exist and sometimes briefly didn't. The universe really was getting out of control.

  A pair of floraliths rippled past toward the Last Resort cafe, their bioluminescent patches cycling erratically between neon pink and what could charitably be called vomit yellow.

  'They really are flarping pathetic,' Juliette grumbled from the next hoverbananalounge along the pool deck.

  'What did you expect from the Last Resort?' HMG asked. 'This is a very carefully selected cross-section of people and peoply things who have come last at everything their whole lives.'

  'I know, sis… but really?'

  'Just watch the wait-staff if you can't stomach the lasts. They've been handpicked from people and peoply things who've always come first.'

  A first waiter effortlessly balanced seventeen impossibly complex drinks on one finger while solving the unified field theory and composing a sonnet about his own magnificence.

  'Show-off,' HMG muttered.

  'Yes, I get the gag,' Juliette said.

  'It's not a gag. It's irony. The strong, smart, handsome… whatever… ones, waiting hand and hoof on the weak.'

  'Great. But why bother?'

  'To narrow down the contenders.'

  'Contenders?' Juliette asked, sipping her drink as apocalyptic elevator music drifted across the pool deck.

  HMG nodded, staring up at the Sky Seas of Lividia Mirrormajor. A million reflections of her potential selves stared back, most looking stressed, a few looking murderous, and one, oddly, appearing to be enjoying a tango lesson.

  She looked back down to the Last Resort and sighed. She'd asked the resort architects to design the place so that every guest could experience the resort in their own unique way, while still strongly encouraging social interaction. But she thought they'd gone too far with the quantum uncertainty walkway that simultaneously passed through every point in every other guest's room.

  'I'm going to take that day off I've been talking about,' HMG said hesitantly. 'Properly,' she added more determinedly. 'I'm going to log off ThinkerLinker entirely. But I need someone to cover for me. The universe can’t be left unmonitored for a whole day, or the system will collapse even faster than usual. You know how the unlaws of undisorder unget when I'm unwatching.' HMG sipped her drink, allowing herself to momentarily drop the mental barrier preventing her from perceiving all of spacetime simultaneously. For a fraction of a second, she glimpsed the converging timelines centred around Earth2. She quickly shut the thought down, disturbed by what she'd seen.

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  'It's hardly surprising that you want a day off," Juliette noted with a shrug.

  'I'm old, Juliette.' The statement hung in the air like a confession. 'I've seen every variation of existence repeat itself. Finding something genuinely surprising is… rare.'

  'Okay, but please tell me you're picking someone to cover for you from the firsts… the one most humble at serving others or something?'

  HMG shook her head.

  'You're not only picking a normal, you're picking a LAST normal.' Juliette scowled at the flubbery lasts.

  HMG scanned the pool deck uneasily. The Last Resort was the last place in the universe where she was supposed to be reachable. That made it the perfect place for an ambush. She needed to stay on her toes. Even if they were presently reclining in yellow slippers.

  'I like things a certain way, Juliette. I don't want anyone mucking about with my ship.'

  Beneath her flippant demeanour, HMG felt the familiar, and annoyingly irrepressible, tug of responsibility. She'd created the universe's systems to run autonomously, but they still required periodic maintenance. Like an ancient clock that would keep perfect time for centuries before suddenly needing a single, crucial adjustment. Except the universe needed to be tweaked roughly every microsecond.

  Juliette nodded. 'Makes a whack sort of sense, I suppose. A FIRST normal might try to do something about the constant cosmic complaints. A LAST normal will just give up and let things be.'

  'That was the plan. Why I built the Last Resort. But I messed up.'

  'Go figure,' Juliette said, smiling.

  'Yeah, thanks for that. The problem is, by selecting all these lasts to come here, I accidentally made them all into minor firsts. None of this lot are entirely hopeless anymore.'

  'So… just pick the hopeless-est one.'

  'I can't take a risk like that.'

  Juliette shook her head. 'OMHMG, then what was the point of us even coming here?'

  'I needed a… boost. I'm so exhausted all the time. There is no quicker way to feel better about your own lot than to surround yourself with a pathetic pack of lasts.'

  At the far end of the pool, a group of fluorescent falloverflops were engaging in what looked like synchronised drowning. Closer to the middle, a sloppy-snouted squishwaddle was trying to put on a large pair of swimmers. Both of the large swimmers were shoving him away, crying out for the lifeguards. The first lifeguards were far too busy posing dramatically and writing autobiographies to notice.

  'Now you're getting ME down, too,' Juliette grumbled. 'Just pick someone already and go for a darn swim.'

  'I can't,' HMG said. 'I've WRECKED this lot of lasts. I need to look elsewhere for someone who has been last at absolutely everything their whole life. Someone truly clueless about how anything works.'

  Juliette shrugged, setting her long brown curls swaying. 'You should've thought of that before giving them all ThinkerLinker. All they need to do is think any think about any think and they know the answer instantly. How can you expect to find someone truly clueless?'

  'You know full well most of them don't give a think about any think important. They just get on with whatever frivolous nonsense is keeping their tiny Brians occupied. I just need to find someone who takes that utter ignorance to the ultimate extreme. An unadulterated fool. Like Paul was back in the day.'

  There was something heavier than usual in her voice. Something that made her uncharacteristically nervous. She'd taken breaks before. Existence required it. But never with such a sense of finality.

  Juliette looked up at the wall of floating time-displays, showing the current time across seventeen million planetary systems. Half were blinking error messages, three were running backwards, and one was stubbornly insisting it was next Tuesday. The Earth2 display was spinning like an ancient slot machine.

  'Seems you're running out of time, HMG. How are you going to find your hopeless backup god if these LASTS are all off the table?'

  'I'm holding a competition.'

  'Ooh… I like those. What is it?'

  'A popularity contest.'

  'Huh? Isn't that the opposite?'

  'Not if I make it the opposite. I'm going to pick the one who comes last.'

  'Isn't that just the same mistake as the one you've made with this lot?' Juliette waved to a group of lasts who were presently tripping over their towels and falling into the pool, landing on other lasts who had just tripped over their towels and fallen into the pool. 'Won't it give them some sort of unwarranted confidence if you make one of them god?'

  'Not if I put a real sting in the tail. I have a way to make last place really feel like last place.'

  'What's that?'

  'I'm throwing in a bonus death sentence for the lucky last, along with all of their friend and family and everyone else they've ever known.'

  Juliette grinned and raised her glass. 'You crafty minx. Do you have the quarfs in place?'

  HMG nodded. 'Though I still need someone to pin the blame on. A well-chosen scapegoat is worth their weight in flimflams.' She scanned the pool deck, wincing at the ridiculous, mumbling, bumbling lasts and their grumbling, overachieving first wait-staff. 'My god senses tell me that someone will end up falling right into my lap.'

  Juliette grinned. 'The way this lot handle themselves, your god senses might mean that literally.'

  HMG followed Juliette's gaze to one particular lifeguard whose features seemed oddly familiar. She remembered separating the Skyward twins years ago. One raised on Earth2, the other spirited away. The galactaphobia she'd given the Earth-bound twin had been a stroke of genius, even by her standards. Hard to accidentally interfere with the rest of the universe when you're too terrified to leave the ground. Though that might become a problem if he happened to survive his trial and she happened to need him to do a little strategic meddling elsewhere. Of course, none of that mattered if he wasn't chosen or died before the choosing.

  Henrietta Millicent God snapped out of her calculations as Juliette clinked her glass against hers. They each took a sip of their drinks. Then HMG allowed herself a small, knowing smile as she thought of something. Not a TRIVIAL something, like which planets were scheduled to blow up tomorrow. An IMPORTANT something. A something that might change the nature of planetary destruction entirely. Or at least her role in it. Forevermore. And... possibly... even then some.

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