Kay and Morphei talk about why Gods allow bad stuff to happen to humans

“Why must graceless men exist?”

“Because humanity is a great experimentation of character. You are not very clever, you are naturally lazy and your only superpower is solving difficulties under duress. You can stack experience to almost no limit, soon able to think on your feet with almost no intuitive pre-programming. We did create the likes of Neanderthals first and they got nowhere – for all their superior intelligence, they were crafty, artistic, peaceful, loving and – wedged. It wasn’t until we introduced Cro-Magnons into the playfield, a race half as clever, wanting nothing more than rape and kill and take what others have appropriated, that humanity moved out of the cave. Neanderthals learned everything about nature and still failed to tame a single chicken. Cro-Magnons harnessed animals, elements, water, earth, made machines, you name it. When they ran out of caves, they built cities, when they ran out of land, they built boats and sought the new ones. What kind of a madman thinks, when he stares at something as vicious and bloodthirsty as the sea: I want to see what’s on the other side. You don’t THRIVE, Paper, in the Garden. That’s why none of your young kinsmen chooses to live in the Garden; they all want the world first. Every other creature in creation serves a benevolent, almost benign purpose, stagnant and flawless. Humans were made to better God. It will hurt to get to there, it may take a little while, but everyone is betting on you. Why do you think this planet of all the others has been spared time and again, fertilised time and again, watered and warmed and seeded, regardless of what ill befell it, time and again. You don’t think Mars is but a twin who eventually got left out of the race?”

“It’s a little bit of a cruel experiment.”

“Ye, we get bored after a few billion years of staring at sea anemone court.”

“What does Herne get to say about all this?”

“You are his favourite children, but his children you are.”

“He is okay with his Father allowing this?”

“His father is busy with ruling the skies and the endless oceans of darkness between possibilities that may arise some day. He hardly has time to scold his descendants for every questionable action they offer.”

“It is not a very complicated family up there, is it, yours?”

“Let me put it in terms you will understand… If Herne’s clan were the Medici and humanity were the renaissance artists, doctors, war marshals and explorers, we are the plague that inspired you to get off your behinds and out of the Dark age.”

Blimey. Alright then.