The Builders

I learned today that our world was never supposed to exist. It was an accident. And by “world” I actually mean our entire universe. Every last bit. A mistake, made by beings of such ridiculous power and knowledge we might as well call them “gods.”

I don't, though. They called themselves the Builders, and I'll stick to that. It makes things slightly less intimidating. Slightly.

The Builders got it into their heads many eons ago that they needed a perfect reality. A place where all of their “people” (and I use that word lightly) could live forever in happiness. In order to do that, though, they needed to tear the old reality apart. I have no idea what the old place was like, but it's not really relevant any more.

See, they succeeded. They created their own version of Heaven.

The thing is, with all their power and knowledge, they were still far from omniscient. There were side effects to rebuilding reality from scratch. (Who'd have thought, right?)

One of those side effects was the creation of thousands of other worlds/universes/planes/whatever that were not part of their design. These places were only tangentially connected to their heaven, so it took them a long time to notice. The Builders weren't quite sure what to do about this when they found out.

They were like us in at least one way: they couldn't agree.

And that's how it all started. There's a reason the Builders aren't around anymore.