It's dark.

Like super dark.

Take your breath away, and then keep it hidden in a very cruel game of keepaway because you can't see anything at all dark.

Nyctophobia sufferer's biggest nightmare dark.

Power outage in a windowless room that is centred in a jenga tower of other windowless rooms, the middle bristle on a hairbrush of a windowless room arena where everywhere it looks it just finds another windowless room kind of dark.

So very dark that a new colour classification has to be invented. The going favourite right now is marianiblack, followed closely by blacketyblack. These are just first drafts though, probably bound to change as more people get involved in the naming.

Roque de los Muchachos observatory would be insanely jealous sort of darkness .

The Boötes Void losing its title as universe's darkest place type of dark.

The caliber of darkness that makes a black hole quiver in its black hole boots. Which it has to shop for at a very special black hole footwear outlet.

It's pretty damn dark. That's what's being said here.

The darkness had come about as the result of one thing. One little daily thing that the whole of Earth relied on pretty heartily. One thing each morning that everyone everywhere was fairly dependent on. That thing, being the sun coming up.

Normally no one really has to worry about it occurring, it just does, about as unfailing a phenomenon as exists. However, today, it hadn't happened. There was no sun. Nada. Zip. Zilch. Zero. No rays to be seen at all. Not even a sliver of beam peeking its corona over the horizon. Not that anyone could see the horizon anyway. They'd need the sun for that sort of business. And it just wasn't around.

The phrase "as sure as the sun will come up tomorrow" was taking a real hit to its veracity. Right now, it was fully seven minutes past its call time.

There was a knock on the door. A forceful rapping that did not belie the barely sequestered concern powering it.

"Saul?" A melodic voice penetrated the door better than any battering ram ever could.

There was no answer. No signal that anyone had even heard the plea other than a soft susurrus of fitted sheet as Saul tried to silently change position. His legs having gotten tired of remaining in their spot and calling out to be shifted, even taking into account, or perhaps due to, the circumstances he found himself in right now.

"Saul? I heard that. I know you're in there." The soft crinkling of bedclothes may have gone unnoticed by average auditory prowess, but not even a singular phonon could escape Saul's mother. She and her omniscient ears, and omniscient everything else, continued. "Isn't there something you are supposed to be doing right now?"

There most certainly was. Something pretty important.

Saul has been known by many names over the years. Ra. Huitzilopochtli. Lugh. Surya. Arinna. Helios. Inti. Sol. Akycha. Malakbel. Yu Yi. Tabiti. Amaterasu. Mithra. Gnowee. Shapash. Kinich Ahau. And thousands, millions, apeiro, more. Each civilization putting their own stamp of ownership on his moniker.

At home though? He just goes by Saul. Saul the Sun God. Whose job, as you may have guessed by now, is to make sure that sun comes up each day, and stays there until its time to clock out and let the moon take over.

It was Saul's fault the sun was still missing. Due to the fact that he was still in bed. First trying to hide out, hoping people would just let him be, but then after realizing that wasn't going to happen, starting in on his obstinate, but well thought out, reasoning for shirking his duties this morning.

"I don't wanna."

It was much more well thought out than that, but we all seem to become five years old when confronted by our angry mothers. Doubly so when your mother happens to be the Goddess of Everything. Very tough to shop for on Mother's Day.

"What are you talking about?"

The concern was gone from Kyra's voice (also known by many names, Cronus, Marduk, Odin, Baiame, Amun, Ba'al, Jupiter, Perun, Kāne, Nana Buluku, Shangdi, Nyame, Ukko, Amenominakanushi, and so forth, you get it. She's the all-god, also known as the all-spark in the Transformers religion). Where once she had been mildly worried something had happened to Saul that had rendered him incapacitated. Unlikely seeing his immortal impermeable status of being, but these things have been known to happen every once in an eon.

Now she knew he was okay. And that was no okay.

"I'm not doing it." Saul stuck to his guns, even if those guns were misfiring wildly at the moment.

The door burst open. No amount of locks can keep the Goddess of Everything from entering a room if she so chooses. Rooms are meaningless to her anyway as she can see everything everywhere at all times. That's right. She's looking at you right now.

What she saw was not her son getting ready for work as she had been hoping. Saul was sprawled out on his bed. Bespoke tailored onesie still clinging to his prone frame. A faint smell of restless sweaty sleep permeated the room. Overpowering the sandalwood candle he'd lit in preparation of this showdown.

"Mother. I'm not going." Saul had regained some of his composure. He was no longer acting like a five year old. He was fully Bar Mitzvah'd now. Even though he looked slovenly and unprepared, this entire episode had been metastasizing in his brain for months. "I just can't do it anymore. Not without some changes."

Kyra arched her eyebrows at this. They were so high up her forehead now that they were almost parallel. An equal sign on tilt.

She sighed. A long, forced patience instigated, uninterrupted vocal denouement that rang out across the entire solar system, picked up by complex radiometers around the globe as unidentified background noise.

"Go on." She could order him back to work, using her omniscient powers to compel him, but thought she'd give him the benefit of the doubt and listen for a little. See if she could see to his concerns some other, non-invasive, less humiliating way.

"I was talking to some of the minor gods down in bodily fluids."

Inexorably likeable and easygoing, with a perpetual perfect tan from his constant contact with the sun, Saul made friends everywhere he went. From the most powerful deities in charge of air, oceans, and beauty, to the lesser known, focusing on door hinges, or eternal bacon, or eating dirt or whatever.

This elicited an eye roll from Kyra. She tried to hide it, but Saul, having been her son since only a few minutes past the dawn of time, was well attuned to her mannerisms. Able to deftly decipher any minute facial tic or imperceptible shoulder shrug or planckian escape of sound. To him, this half covered eye roll was as transparent as chemically pure window glass.

"Just because they are in charge of urine and feces and flatulence does not make them less important than us." Saul was truly a God of the people. In constant pitched battle against his parents' generational generalities.

"Actually, it does. You are the sun god. Matt, as much as I love him and think he's a wonderfully amusing dinner guest, is a fart god. One of 1138 fart gods. There is a hierarchy here. And he is below you on it. Like so far below you'd need a submarine to even get close." Kyra was losing what little patience she had. It was now eleven minutes past the sun's normal entrance, pretty soon there may be some panic setting in, and then she'd have to do something about it herself.

"You're just worried about you having to do extra work." It was as if Saul was reading her mind.

"Be that as it may. And you know I have a massage this afternoon, so would love to not have to cancel, you have a job to do, a very important job, now go and do it."

"But that's just my point. Your massage. I've been doing this whole sun thing for 4.5 billion years, give or take a decade, and I've never had a day off. I deserve some me time." Saul sat up. Making a cogent argument was somewhat offset by lying down. This is why people on cots can rarely convince anyone of anything.

Kyra nodded. She'd heard this sort of thing before. Hell, she'd even felt it. You can't be an all-knowing deity without wishing for a vacation every now and then.

"Saul. I get it. Don't you think I sometimes feel the weight of every living thing on my shoulders? From the smallest preon to the largest blue whale, I hear their concerns and pleas and needs every second of every day, even while I'm getting my shiatsu on. I am constantly concerned that if I shut down for even a second all of it might come loose and the whole system would crater? I'd love to take a week on a beach in L 98-59 or something. But we can't. We're Gods. And we're required to be on duty at all times."

She was sorry. As sorry for herself as she was for her son. But she knew it to be true.

"There's got to be another way." Saul said, a smidge of despondency creeping into his previously buoyant proposition. Just a fingerprint of questioning on his stainless steel appliance of concern. He wiped it off easily. He had other arrows in his quiver this morning.

"As I was saying, when I was talking to Matt, and that visitor from that other pantheon, Yk953%3 (he pronounced it fluently even though there were no sounds in any language they knew that could encompass this visiting god's name), was there, they were saying that things run a bit differently where they come from."

Kyra put her face to the heavens in consternation, which, since they were situated in the heavens right now was actually just a bit to the left.

"I knew that deity exchange program was a mistake."

Sometimes Gods like to take a semester abroad, across the Interverse somewhere else. A war God from the Orgoban system wants to see what it's like in Thruges on Universe 4.2, while the war Goddess there (actually a droplet of viscous fluid as that is their genetic makeup) wouldn't mind checking out Yarpaka (where all beings are different hard candies) for a gurblang or two. A whole system was put in place to foster this kind of inter-deity movement across the Interverse. Kyra had long resisted it, 4.5 billion years long to be exact, but had finally relented when Willa, her sister (known is many circles as Hades, Yama, Izanami, Shingon, Eshu, Anubis, etc....) thought it might be a good idea, get some fresh faces around. Stir up a little excitement.

The entire breakdown of their beliefs seems a bit too much excitement. She'd be sure to tell Willa that later.

"What did this Yk953%3 have to say?"

Saul knew his mom was just humouring him at the moment, but that was all the daylight he needed. In contrast to the fact that there was absolutely no daylight anywhere right now since he hadn't done his job or rising the sun yet.

"Well first I had to learn the language, where Yk953%3 comes from they don't speak so much as tap dance their communication to one another, but I picked it up pretty quick." Saul did a nice shuffle ball chain to show he meant business.

"Yk953%3 was saying... dancing... whatever, that in their Deitalurgical system they sometimes cover each other's shifts, or hire temporary help to when one God or another needs the occasional day off. Or even longer sometimes!"

"You are the God of the sun. A fart god can't handle that. They aren't powerful enough. Even the silent but deadly ones."

"Sure, one of them probably can't, but like a baker's dozen might have a shot. Just for a day. Maybe the sun goes half as high that day. So what? I'd get some much needed R&R and would come back refreshed for another eon or so..."

Kyra knew Saul wasn't just talking about himself. If she agreed to this it would trickle down everywhere. Maybe that wouldn't be such a bad idea. For morale. And sanity. She could sure use some time to herself without the literal mass of all living beings in the quadrant dragging her down.

Saul knew he'd broken through. She was musing. Once you hit an initial rumination you aren't far off from full on deep thought.

"Also, I would like a raise." Never one to quit while ahead, Saul was much more fond of climbing as high as he could. Falling from the top was much better than tripping at the bottom to him. Maybe not for mortality rates, but certainly for dreaming big.

"You don't get paid anything." This knocked Kyra out of her reverie. Taking this topic from pertinent to persnickety. Sometimes when you strike while the iron is hot you bend it too far.

"Exactly!"

"Saul. I know you were used to getting showered with sacrifices and offerings and countless blessing and prayers, we all were. And it has been pretty slim pickings for this last thousand years or so, but we're Gods, there's some serious perks to that having nothing to do with payment. Like the fact we can do anything we want at any time with little to no repercussions."

Saul shrugged. "I saw this pretty sweet scepter on Godsmart that I really want. It's only 14 Octillion Godbucks."

"I'm not instituting an entire currency system just because you want a toy. Have Brig make you one if you have to."

"That's copyright infringement. We can't just steal this artist's idea. They worked hard on it! I want the real thing!"

Now Kyra was really gonna lose it. Her eyes rolled so far back into her head that she saw her sinuses.

"So put like a goddamn lightning bolt on it or something!" She forced herself to calm down before she really exploded and like accidentally took Maine off the map or something. "We're getting off track here. If I promise to think about this day off thing can you get dressed and pick up your sun like you were supposed to twenty minutes ago?"

Saul broke in. He knew he'd gone a little off course with that last one, but he wanted to rein it back in a bit. Get back in the groove. He wasn't finished with his meticulously cultivated list of demands yet. "And I want sick days."

"For Kyra's sake (When you are the omnipotent God, you become your own swearword), we're Gods, we don't get sick!"

"We don't know what the future might bring. Maybe there's a celestiovirus that will emerge or something?"

"Fine. In the event that some time in the future there is some sort of disease that effects Gods, I will think about establishing a sick leave program."

"And...and... maybe I want to pull the moon around every once in a while. Or see what being the god of agriculture is like for a day. Maybe tame a few cows as a cultural exchange."

Kyra was about to go ballistic. Seldom had anyone ever dared to question her practices to her face before. And now it was all coming out as a deluge of her inadequacies, an errata for her entire perceived mismanagements. She couldn't take much more. And she had to get to that massage.

"OKAY! ENOUGH!" The tremors in her voice caused actual tremors on all planetary surfaces. An 8.4 on the Richter. Any more anguish in her speech and there may have been some real problems. Saturn missing a ring or two.

It was more than enough to shut Saul up. In fact no God anywhere said a word until the aftershocks died down.

"I will look into days off. Maybe hiring some extra help. Especially during holidays. I'll take sick days under consideration and see if we can possibly set up some sort of job shadowing program whereby people could look into other deity duties that they may be interested in. Godbucks is not something I'd ever thought we'd need, with all the manna we can handle, and really anything we could ever want for the taking, but I will also put some people on researching what that would look like. But, that's as good as I can do right now. And I think that is fair. So, if we are done here, can you get your fucking pants on and pull the sun into the fucking sky like you are supposed to?"

Saul was frozen for a moment. He'd gotten way more than he thought he was going to get. He had been prepared to take this twenty-minute argument while in his pajamas as his time off and call it a win. But he'd actually gotten through to her. Almost the entire list he and his pals down in farts had come up with was going to be 'looked into'. Whether that meant anything would actually happen or if it was just an empty promise, he didn't know, but it seemed as if his mom was being sincere and it was the start of a conversation in any event. He always liked the starts of conversations better than the ends anyway.

"Yes, Mom. Yes I will. And thanks."

And so it was, twenty-seven minutes late, the sun finally arrived. Some people, and a few iguanas, had given themselves heart attacks over the panic of thinking they'd never see the sun again, but all in all pretty minor disturbance all things considered.

It was also the start of vast changes in the Milky Way Deitalurgical system. Bringing about three weeks vacation per deity per century, a robust internal godly duty diversification system, a Godbucks tipping program so any deity that wished to purchase something from the Godsternet could work towards earning it, and many other changes that made being a Milky Way supreme being much more palatable than it had been. From the fartiest fart god to the mightiest all-god, job satisfaction when through the roof. And seeing as though the pantheon roof is the fabric of the universe itself, that's pretty high up.