1#
Many people believe that Santa Claus is just a fairy tale, a myth, or a mascot, in short, not real. But in fact, he is the only deity still active in the human world.
Every Christmas, Santa Claus sits in his magical snow house and listens to the wishes of humans. However, not every wish sent to Santa Claus will be heard, only the wishes of those who truly believe in his existence. Then, he randomly selects one wish from these wishes that can be fulfilled, and makes it come true. Of course, since most of the people who truly believe in Santa Claus are children, their wishes are usually not complicated, such as a girl wanting a toy race car, a boy wanting a set of beautiful dresses, or a frightened child wanting their parents to reconcile.
On December 25, 2019, another Christmas arrived. Santa Claus drank a small glass of red wine and lay down on his favorite lazy sofa, ready to listen to people's wishes. Although the most widely used dating system in the human world is about to enter another era, the wishes of the children who believe in Santa Claus are still as pure as ever. This is probably the only thing left in the human world that has not been contaminated by capitalism and consumerism.
A total of 10,077 valid wishes were received this year, slightly better than expected, at least barely maintaining a five-digit number. The first wish Santa Claus heard came from a girl in South Korea. She said that she once heard her mother tell her father that having a child was a mistake, causing them to lose their freedom and have to work hard to earn money. She hoped that her parents could earn a lot of money, live freely, and have time to play with her.
"Nowadays, children are becoming more and more miserable!" Santa Claus sighed, "Maybe I should retire like other deities." But he continued to listen to the second wish, which came from a boy in Mexico. He wished for his father, who had been killed by the police, to come back to life. Santa Claus received quite a few similar wishes every year, but bringing someone back to life was beyond his capabilities, so he removed this wish from the list.
The third wish came from someone Santa Claus was already familiar with, a 29-year-old American with intellectual disabilities. However, he was fortunate to be born into a wealthy and friendly family, so he had always lived a simple and happy life. His wish was the same as last year: to have more friends.
Santa Claus continued to listen to the wishes. When he heard the 8,901st wish, he couldn't help but frown. This wish came from a boy in China who did not have a long-standing Christmas tradition. He wished, "I hope all the people I don't like die."
This was the first time Santa Claus had heard such an evil and terrifying wish since 1895, but even so, because this wish could be fulfilled, Santa Claus did not remove it from the pool of wishes. However, he was not worried either, after all, in over a thousand years, he had encountered many evil wishes, but had never randomly selected them - Santa Claus always brought good luck.
Santa Claus listened to all 10,077 valid wishes, excluding 145 wishes that were impossible to fulfill, leaving 9,932 achievable wishes. This marked the first time this number had dropped below five digits; a hundred years ago, this number was still in the tens of millions. Santa Claus sighed, lamenting the purity of humanity that had long passed, and the lie that made children believe that Santa Claus did not exist.
He left the lazy sofa, replenished his cup with a little red wine, and after savoring it, he began the random selection process. This program relied on the world's fate line and had a randomness that no deity (including the god of fate) could predict.
Soon, the result was revealed: "I wish all the people I don't like to die."
Santa Claus listened to the result in a daze, then placed the cup with a little wine on the table, picked up the almost full bottle of wine next to it, and drank it all. Then, he made up his mind: this wish would be the last wish he fulfilled, and after completing this task, he would choose to retire and no longer care about anything related to damn humans.
He lay back on the lazy sofa, connected to the thoughts of the wisher, and began to analyze the detailed task list.
Task list:
- Kill all humans
Santa Claus tapped his head, suspecting that he had made a mistake. But he hadn't, the list was still there, and he still had to kill all humans. Just in case, Santa Claus connected to the thoughts of the wisher again and reanalyzed everything from the beginning. Sure enough, it was still "Kill all humans," even including the wisher himself. But he was only an eight-year-old child! How could he have such hatred towards humans and himself? What had he experienced?
2#
On August 13, 2016, five-year-old Zhang Huian experienced loneliness for the first time. He woke up in a place where he could smell the grass, stagnant water, and the scent of old clothes. That old clothes was worn on him, and the surrounding environment was different from any place he knew - it was a dimly lit small room, where everything inside seemed to be covered in a layer of dust. A wooden door was closed, and there were footsteps outside.
"Mom?" Zhang Huian called out, but he knew that those were not his mother's footsteps, his mother's footsteps were lighter.
The footsteps approached, followed by a metallic sound, and a woman who was not his mother opened the door. "Are you awake, child? Are you hungry?" she said with a smile, seeming very happy.
The smile made Zhang Huian relax a little. "Where's my mom?" he asked.
"I am your mom," the woman said.
"You're not my mom!" Zhang Huian became anxious. "Mom! Mom!" he shouted loudly.
"Your original mom doesn't want you anymore, so now I am your mom."
"You're lying!" Zhang Huian shouted. He wouldn't allow anyone to say that his mom didn't want him because his mom had told him that no matter what those uncles and aunties said to tease him that his mom didn't want him, it was all fake, because she was his mom, she would always love him, and she would never abandon him.
"Your mom gave you to me as a foster child."
"You're a bad person, talking bad about my mom behind her back."
The woman's face suddenly changed. "If you don't call me mom, you won't have any food!" she said, then walked away and locked the door.
"Mom!" Zhang Huian shouted, "Mom! Mom! Mom! Mom! Mom! Mom..." Even when he cried, his mom didn't appear.
He shouted until he was tired, then he stopped crying and started knocking on the door, making a loud noise.
The woman opened the door again. "What's making noise!" she shouted, "Are they coming to get me? Save me!"
Zhang Huian closed his eyes and curled up on the ground. He heard his real mom singing to him. She held him, sitting on the warm sofa in their cozy home, watching animated movies about Santa Claus together, and she made him aware of the fat old man in a red suit with a big white beard. "Thank you for helping me make my wish come true."
"Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way..." Eight-year-old Zhang Huian fell asleep in warmth, accompanied by his mother's singing.
3#
His mother could no longer hear, and even if she could, she probably wouldn't understand. After her child went missing, she searched for over a year, seeking help from everyone and spending all her savings, but she eventually lost hope. She had thought she could move on, continue to live with regrets, because she had received a higher education and knew that some people seemed to be born with a turbulent fate, and she knew that only by calmly facing the misfortunes of life could she find a hint of peace and happiness within the misfortune. But in the end, she couldn't move on, she couldn't bear the thought of her child suffering elsewhere while she could live on with a clear conscience. She was afraid that her child might have his hands and feet cut off, his tongue pulled out, and his eyes gouged, becoming a beggar tool on the streets to beg for sympathy and money. She was afraid that her child might be secretly sold to those who were full of evil and capable of hiding their evil, they might take away her child's young and healthy organs in various ways, they might abuse him in various ways, or they might even turn him into food for those beasts. She was afraid that her child might be abducted to a remote place, then grow up in pain, and forget about herself...
She was afraid of all sorts of possibilities. These possibilities eventually overwhelmed her. She went crazy. Crying and laughing, running around, seemingly looking for something. If you asked her, she would only say that she was looking for justice from the heavens. If you told her that the heavens were up in the sky, she would say that the heavens were not up in the sky, that they were blind and hiding.
She was right, the deities were hiding. In Santa Claus's memory, there was still a vivid record of the wave of deity retreats from 1920 to 2000, because the deities somehow concluded that humanity had grown to a sufficient level and no longer needed them. However, during this time, humanity also experienced the largest and most devastating war in human history, and came close to completely destroying civilization with nuclear weapons. But humanity ultimately survived these crises, seemingly proving the deities' belief that human civilization had matured. But now, because of an eight-year-old child's wish, this civilization was about to be destroyed by Santa Claus's own hands.
On December 26, 2019, the first day after Christmas, the expected dawn did not come as planned. London was engulfed in a sudden panic at 7 a.m. The government called it an "abnormal phenomenon," and this abnormal phenomenon seemed to be able to read the rules set by humans, dividing the world into distinct darkness and light on both ends of the prime meridian at zero degrees longitude. To the east of the prime meridian, it was a normal morning on Earth, but to the west, it was still immersed in the deepest darkness of the day, and even the temperature on this side had dropped significantly. The darkness spread like a plague at the speed of Earth's rotation and would obviously cover the entire Earth in 23 hours, 56 minutes, and 4 seconds.
"#Apocalypse" panic spread globally before the darkness reached everywhere. What would happen when darkness covered the entire Earth? No one knew, but humans were always good at speculating and convincing themselves to believe.
"It's the Apocalypse, it's the final judgment." Some said that when darkness covered the entire Earth, judgment would begin. Everyone who had ever existed, including those who had already died, would be judged based on their actions in life, resulting in either eternal blessings or eternal suffering.
After a day, except for the polar day region in Antarctica, the whole world lost the light and warmth of the sun, as if something had enveloped the entire Earth. But the judgment did not begin, as if all the people on Earth were sentenced to freeze to death in the darkness due to their collective sins.
"It's aliens, it's an invasion, it's a dark forest strike." Some said that humanity's radio activities in recent decades had exposed humanity's location and had become a potential threat that needed to be dealt with. The current events were just the specific implementation of this process, so there was no need to panic, the outcome was inevitable, because unlike the stories described in novels and movies, the technological gap was an insurmountable barrier.
But what is the difference between gods and aliens? Just like in the eyes of ants, nuclear weapons and bonfires are no different.