TEACHER
Alright God, Your turn! Come on up.
GOD
Okay.
GOD walks to the front of the classroom holding a box.
TEACHER
We're all so excited to see what You brought today! Alright class, pay attention to God now!
GOD
Good morning everyone. So today for Show And Tell I brought lightning.
TEACHER
Ohhh, lightning! Doesn't that sound interesting, class? Tell us about lightning, God.
GOD
Well.
GOD opens the box and takes a bolt of lightning out of it.
GOD (CONT'D)
What I actually have here is a minimum viable product since I'm still pretty early in the development process. But essentially lightning is an extremely powerful electrostatic discharge whose primary function is smiting people when they do something I don't like.
TEACHER
My oh my, how very interesting indeed! Can you explain that a little bit more?
GOD
Well I mean mainly it would be pretty obvious things like eating bacon or sacrificing their kids to Ba'al instead of me, but sometimes it would just be totally random stuff like that time when Uzzah—
TEACHER
No no, I meant explain the lightning itself, not the things people do to make you smite them.
GOD
Oh. Right. Well, basically lightning is the nearly instantaneous release of a tremendous amount of energy when two regions of opposite polarity neutralize themselves. I'm still very much in alpha and running a lot of tests here, but right now it looks like the most promising scenario for this to play out naturally would be between a negatively charged thundercloud and a region of positively charged Earth located near or beneath that cloud.
TEACHER
Hmm. I assume the person being smitten is neutralized in this process as well?
GOD
That's the plan, yeah. I was a bit worried during initial R&D because I discovered that in certain cases it might actually be possible for a person to survive a lightning smite. But then my marketing guy Michael said if that ever happens to someone I smite, I should just spin it as an example of how I'm not just an awesome God but also a merciful God too.
TEACHER
Makes sense. Good move bringing Michael on like that.
GOD
Yeah there's really no one like him. Allah's still pissed at me for that headhunt. Anyway, something else I'm working on with this lightning concept is compatibility with other types of smiting I've already developed and launched, like volcanic eruptions for example. So say if I'm already in the process of burying an entire city of sinners under hot burning ash, then I can toss in some lightning too if I'm feeling particularly wrathful that day.
TEACHER
How clever!
GOD
Thanks. So anyway I guess that's about it.
TEACHER
Wonderful! Thank You for that lovely presentation, God. Would You like to show the class how it works now?
GOD
Sure. Bobby didn't read his Bible yesterday and I was planning to smite him anyway, so I guess I could demonstrate on him.
BOBBY scoots his chair back and raises his hand.
BOBBY
Uhhh, I don't think this is a good—
TEACHER
Excuse me! Did I call on you, Bobby?
BOBBY
No ma'am, I just—
TEACHER
How many times have I told you? No talking unless I've called on you first! I'm sending you to the principal's office just as soon as this is over, if God sees fit in His mercy to let you survive.
(to GOD)
Alright, go ahead now!
BOBBY gets up and runs for the door. GOD hurls a lightning bolt that strikes BOBBY in the head. BOBBY falls to the floor and doesn't move.
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2-1-22. A selection of cropped and edited screenshots from a 7-minute iPhone 6 video I shot of God practicing His lightning smite in a thunderstorm over the Ohio River between Kentucky and Illinois one night this past December.