The Wind-Up Toy
A parable that covers pretty much everything.
The Older One held the tiny orb out to the Younger One and said, “Look child! I‘ve created a wind up toy.”
His child leaned forward to eye it curiously. “How does it work?”
“Aha! First fill it with energy, as much as it can take. Then, release and leave it be. From that initial burst it goes on and on and on until the energy runs out.”
“So you just watch it?”
The Older One laughed a booming laugh. “Yes. You just watch. You can intervene from time to time, but, I’ve learned that it works better when left to itself.”
“That doesn’t sound very fun,” said the Younger One.
“It’s not fun, no. It’s something else entirely. Here, let me demonstrate.” He gripped the orb tightly between thumb and forefinger, holding it out in front of the Younger One. And then, He snapped.
The Toy sparked in fire and exploded with nigh-infinite energy, a roaring chaos that shot rays of intense light through the spaces between His fingers. The burning orb expanded at awesome speed, stretching space itself as it ballooned in His cupped hands. The Older One and the Younger One peered closely at the maelstrom, watching the Toy calm and coalesce into sparkling nests of dust, spinning and dancing in the dark. Uncountable motes flourished into dots of light, around which even smaller specks of dirt and gas orbited, all circling, circling, circling.
“Look here,” He said, pointing to an unimportant place and time.
The Younger One obeyed and witnessed a pock-marked red world, oozing fire from within. But as He stared, the planet bloomed into green and blue and white, and life flourished on it at the tiniest, most unimaginably-insignificant scale. The Younger One touched the living rock as it spun, and then pulled His finger away. He stood back to watch how He had affected it, and He was glad.
In a blink the world had come and gone, swallowed by the brighter speck it orbited, which then spun away from its dissolving group into the darkness to die alone. One by one the lights in the Toy cooled to blue and then white and then black, some of them flashing a bright, final pop of fire and light before death. This whole journey through the eons, from nothing to everything to nothing again, all interactions and happenings of the cosmos and its denizens, fueled by a single snap of His fingers.
With the lights off, the show was complete. Whatever unseen energy had fueled the Toy’s expansion dissipated into emptiness, and its constituent elements collapsed into itself, fitting together once more: a quiet, still, tiny dot, floating in a pool of null.
“I like this wind-up toy,” said the Younger One.
The Older One plucked the orb from nowhere and offered it to the other. “Here,” He said. “Now you try.”
