I had this idea while suffering through another no-sleep night.

I opened a Backpack Whiteboard to jot some notes down before trying to get some sleep, and ... well, words just started spraying.

I almost never write "fiction" that isn't complete stream-of-consciousness insanity (see: STORIES, LEATHER CHICKEN), but this isn't that. This is something different.

I hope it entertains one of you. That would make the last two hours worth it.

Twelve men and women sit around a table, staring at a giant translucent sphere. The sphere is obviously a representation of a planet, but this isn’t the type of globe you’d see in a schoolhouse. It writhes with life – tiny figures making their away across the land and sea, storms scudding across the landscape, volcanoes bubbling lava into the air.

Each diety, for that’s what they are, is barking orders to an assistant and making mystical hand gestures. A man, his long dark hair caught in a ponytail, glares at a thunderstorm with his one unpatched eye, trying to bend its path toward a line of tiny ships. At the same time, a slender, pale blonde woman in blue robes works as hard to keep it away. Thus is the never-ending battle between the God of Storms and the Goddess of the Sea.

And in the corner, alone, sits the small brooding figure of the God of Justice. Last year, he failed, so he spends a year in Chair 13. He knows that the people of Chobak, the people he is supposed to be championing at that table, will not get much fairness this year.

As he watches the chaos, the green eyes of the Harvest Goddess flicker nervously toward him. She spent last year in Chair 13, meaning that a poor year of crops was followed by a devastating famine. Now, still weakened, she sits in Chair 12, trying to avoid a repeat of the vicious cycle that got her the job in the first place.

Was it really 150 years ago that she was a mortal? She had been Halaana, an ordinary local priestess, serving the Harvest God with all of her ability, only to wake up one morning here – the Hall of the World.

As she tried not to stare at her own funeral rites taking place on the sphere, the system was explained to her. The Harvest God had retired, and his assistant was taking over.

A slender woman with short black hair and the brightest blue eyes Halaana had ever seen had been the first person to greet her. The redheaded Halaana had been considered beautiful at home, but she felt like a wilted flower in this woman’s presence.

Once the woman began to speak, though, Halaana forgot all about physical beauty.

“Greetings, Halaana. I am the new Harvest Goddess. Until I sat in this chair, I was known as Lady Ylgiki, but that name now belongs to history. I have chosen you to assist me, and to someday replace me.”

It hadn’t seemed possible, but she quickly learned it was the truth. Each god picked his successor, selecting them from the best of the best that Chobak had to offer. The newcomer became an apprentice, and stayed one until the current god retired. That could be a year or it could be centuries.

At first, that sounded like a terrible deal.

It wasn’t.

Halaana had enjoyed her life as a priestess, but it was nothing compared to this. The work was endless and required constant attention, but they were also immortals with great power. They could step out of Chobakian time, and into God Time. That’s when being a Goddess’ Apprentice became worth it. Twenty-six young, beautiful people – all chosen in the prime of their life because of their brilliance and charisma – with every luxury known to man, and many more that no mortal could imagine.

There was no illness or disease, and you quickly learned not to take your work into God Time. Losing a crop to a hailstorm might elicit curses and threats in the Playing Hall, but, once the globe stopped spinning, it wouldn’t stop you from sharing a drink or your bed with the God of Storms.

Things, though, started to change. Halaana’s mentor made two key mistakes in the same year, then over-extended herself trying to correct them. The people of Chobak didn’t eat well that year, but they had no idea what was coming. For the first time since Halaana’s arrival, the Harvest Goddess went to Chair 13. For an agonizing year, the women could only watch as millions died from starvation, as the undefended crops fell to every trick The Dozen could muster.

The next year, the Harvest Goddess tried to fix everything too fast, ignoring the advice of her friends. “You have to build slowly when you are in Chair 12. You are still weak. Just do enough to stay at the table. Eventually, your turn for Chair 1 will come, and you will be able to fix things.”

But she didn’t listen. She didn’t want to wait five years for her turn in the cycle. She wanted to be strong when the Year of the Harvest came again, so she could create a system that would never fail.

So, in the Year of Death, weakened by Chair 12, she tried ambitious things. Few worked, and Halaana believed those were only because her opponents felt pity. Many more Chobakians died, and things were even worse when she spent the next year back on Chair 13.

This went on for three more years, and Halaana could see the Goddess begin to lose all confidence in herself. Finally, near the end of another disastrous year, they met during God Time.

“I’m leaving at the end of this year,” the Goddess said without preamble.

Halaana tried not to grin and tried not to shriek.

She had been hoping for this moment and dreading it at the same time. She knew she was ready, and she laid awake at night, knowing she wasn’t even close. She pressed her friends for hints and advice, taking careful notes, then burned them in terror.

“You are going to start life as a Goddess in Chair 13, which isn’t very glamorous, but I know you understand why I’m doing it.”

Halaana nodded.

“I get a year to train my assistant without the usual pressure, and then I get back into the game with the cards stacked in my favor.”

“That’s right. You’ll go right to Seat 1, because it is the Year of the Harvest, plus you get the traditional first-year grace period from the others. So you can take time to fix things the way that I couldn’t do.”

Halaana saw the tears in her mentor’s eyes.

“Goddess, are you sure you want to do this? Are you sure you are ready to walk through the Golden Door? You don’t even know what will happen – no one knows.”

“Hala, I want it more than anything. I can’t watch people die any more, and I can’t regain the confidence I need to save them. So I’m going to give you the chair, and I’m going to be Lady Ylgiki again, and I’m going to open the Golden Door and walk into the light. I don’t know what happens then – no one has ever come back to tell us – but it will be better than the nightmares.”

The next weeks had been a whirlwind. Halaana had to help the Goddess salvage as much as she could out of another horrific year, while simultaneously scanning Chobak for an assistant. She finally found one – a man she had noticed before in this horrific run of events. He was a Misu shaman, and he had somehow kept his people from suffering too badly from this global epidemic of starvation. She hated to take him away from his people, tucked away in a mountain valley, but he could do more good here.

She’d been right about him – Qzecha had been born for the job – but she wasn’t ready to give him the reins any time soon. The start had been glorious – she had taken full advantage of her twin blessings that first year, and had patiently built Chobak’s food system back into a smoothly-running machine. For decades, she stayed in the top five chairs and enjoyed herself even more during God Time than when she was a mere Apprentice.

“It still should be that way,” she thought to herself. “God Time isn’t supposed to come into this room. It isn’t fair.”

Sadly, while gods are immortal and wise and brilliant, they are also, at their cores, human. Misunderstandings happen, especially where sex is concerned, and sometimes got ugly. But, dammit, they stayed outside.

There weren’t supposed to be a deals in this room, but jealousy fueled in both the Playing Hall and the bedroom had caused a rare breach of protocol. One pulverized her precious growth with rain, snow, hail and lightning, while the other sent bloody armies to lay waste to entire provinces of farmland.

At the same time, by a coincidence that she later tearfully apologized for, the Goddess of Death unleashed a plague in the Harvest Goddess’ last, best stronghold.

In a moment that didn’t seem real, the Goddess that had never sat at the far end of the table suddenly found herself alone in the corner. There was no grace this time – her long-earned gains started to vanish as she and Qzecho watched. They spent the year planning – she didn’t want to repeat Lady Ylgiki’s mistakes – but it was terrible to watch.

And now, she was back at the table, at the wrong end, feeling the weakness of Chair 12. She knew she couldn’t fix everything at once – there was too much – but it broke her heart to turn away from suffering.

“I have to do this right. I have to do this within my capabilities. I can’t try to do it all at once or I’ll let everyone down again.”

She glanced over her shoulder again, looking at the God of Justice, slumped miserably on his first day in Chair 13.

“I have to do this.”

She turned back to the globe.

“Qzecho, let’s put a little more energy into Altair. They got civilization started once. Let’s see how they can do with a comeback.”