Joshua.
Joshua watched as Moses collapsed on the stage. The desert’s blinding heat grew angry around him. It is well-known that climate will change to mark historical events. And, like Moses, it came and went.
Joshua stared at Moses. Joshua stared at the nothingness. He stared at it as he walked back to his tent. He stared at it when the desert turned cold, then very cold, then deathly cold. He stared at it when he closed his eyes.
He knelt down to pray. The Ten Commandments, he thought. Words from God himself, and not just any God. A decimalized, metric, proper God. To give structure to life, to give hope and beauty and meaning and—Joshua couldn’t stop shaking. The pictures of Moses, splayed dead before a crowd that, now, barely could remember him bubbled above the murk in his head, only to be viciously stuffed down by everything else. His hand twitched.
“Joshua?” A divine voice boomed into Joshua’s head. His hand began to really twitch.
Moses had warned Joshua about this. When Moses first heard the voice of God, he had to wash not only his britches but his socks, his shirts, and even his hat. It had been shocking—explosively shocking. Still, God’s voice came as a surprise to Joshua, whose most religious experience had been watching the execution of a man and then vomiting in a nearby toilet. In the face staring back at him on the porcelain bowl, he gave up, passed out, and saw a shining light.
Joshua stammered.
“Joshua, this is your Lord.”
“Yes, my Lord. What …” Joshua paused. He doubted the English language had the proper words, so he took a random stab. “What can I do for you?” He cringed; the English language cringed; several nearby animals felt the necessity to cringe. One of the continually-starved and therefore incredibly cynical desert lions blushed.
“Joshua, in a few days time, those awful people outside will choose you as your leader.”
“Why me, O Lord?”
“Moses chose you. You’re in his will, you know,” God said. If God had a Face, Joshua imagined that He would be smirking triumphantly in some sense of Cosmic Irony that He knew Joshua could not fully appreciate.
Joshua had reached for the shining light in his moment of depression, but a larger, more suffuse green light had overcome the white light. The light of doubt. He had snapped out of his slumber on the toilet seat, flushed it, and staggered outside. The mob, returning from the execution of the innocent man—the innocent men? Did it matter?—, rushed past him, drunk and happy and ignorant and cruel and happy.
Damn that old man, Joshua secretly thought. I just wanted to say hello. Then he goes and nominates me for some idio—
“I can hear your thoughts, you know.” Joshua stopped, feeling an unsettling combination between embarrassment, shame, and the fear that he might spend eternity in Hell with his soul constantly flambéed by spirits of infinite evil.
“If you have any doubts, Joshua, of the ineffability of it all, please—”
Joshua interrupted, “No. I am a servant of the Lord.”
“Aren’t we all?” God boomed, impassively.
Joshua waited.
“Ha ha,” God laughed, impassively.
Joshua sat, silent.
“It’s funny because I Am Completely Omnipotent.”