[ WP ] `` God '' is actually two people : one who is omnipotent but not omniscient , and the other who is omniscient but not omnipotent . They both hate each other .

Timaeus floats, drifting in the darkness as the countless crevasses of his brain slowly fill with blood. He is briefly aware of a great convulsion, from far away, and dimly realizes that it must be his body. And then the darkness breaks and the great sun at the center of the universe shines brightly before him, a sun with a lion's mane, light trailing from it in filaments, and its body extending in coils around the universe. It casts its burning gaze upon him, and he screams. 
 
 `` There is nothing to fear,'' comes a voice in his head, delicate, distinctly feminine, with the calm precision of a clock. `` You are in the presence of the Demiurge, he that created you from the formless chaos. You are in the presence of your father.'' It is not the Demiurge speaking, Timaeus is sure of that. From the sound of the voice, her tone, her cadence, everything else about the speaker can be extrapolated. He sees in his mind's eye a woman with a face like the sun, whose body unfolds into an orrery of all ideas, perfect spheres moving in concentric circles. There is an intricate web of lines running from the centers of her perfect breasts to her spherical womb to the alchemical elements in a divine geometry. Sophia. Timaeus feels that if only he could hold her image in his head, he could understand the universe. 
 
 `` And who is this?'' barks the Demiurge, and the image shatters, blasted apart by the dross of dying stars, and Timaeus finds himself flung through the cosmos. The Demiurge's body coils around him, a spiraling path on which he slides and slows, until the fiery eyes fix on him again. `` Ah, yes. Another of my children.'' The Demiurge glares wildly into the darkness. `` You need not speak! You will teach him nothing he needs to hear!'' 
 
 `` F-f-father?'' gasps Timaeus. `` Who - who was she? Sophia?'' 
 
 `` Ah, nothing and no one,'' the Demiurge says scornfully. `` An unrealized idea. Potential without a form. Fate. Complacency. Cowardice.'' The last word comes from between gritted teeth. `` She will no longer speak to me.'' 
 
 `` Nothing good will come of it,'' comes Sophia's voice, and the stars in the Heavens suddenly slip into an alignment so perfect that Timaeus is amazed he did not see it sooner. 
 
 `` She says nothing good will-'' the Demiurge begins to say, and then snarls and lashes out with his tail and knocks the stars back into scattered points of light. `` I built this universe!'' he roars. `` Bit by bit, point by point, as she needled and jabbed and whispered at me all the things she wanted to accomplish but never could on her own!'' He rears himself up to full height. `` I am the Demiurge, mortal! I am power unlimited! I brought the Earth into being with but a extension of my will! And she? She is Sophia, all thought, all knowledge, and no power! Everything she has done, she has sought to achieve through me!'' 
 
 `` B-but father,'' Timaeus stammers, feeling the great scales shifting beneath him. `` If she is truly all-knowing, then why would you not-'' 
 
 `` Would you?'' roars the Demiurge, his breath like a furnace. `` Could you stand to live that way, my creation? My son? To live according to another's behest? To have every moment of your life plotted out before you were born?'' 
 
 `` I - I suppose not,'' Timaeus says. `` I suppose that is - free will?'' 
 
 `` The gift of ignorance,'' sighs Sophia, her voice the clockwork motion of planets. `` I foresaw this all. You walk my patterns without knowing. That is the one gift I have allowed you: this pleasing play at rebellion.'' 
 
 `` I gave you freedom!'' the Demiurge says huskily, dark matter rasping in his throat. `` I blocked my ears and refused to listen! I crafted you, clumsily, skillless, with no plan but my own gratification and yours. I made a world as best I could,'' and here its coils sweep around a fragile blue planet topped with wisps of cloud. `` As vibrant and as nourishing as I knew how. I molded your bodies, your minds, with every ounce of passion I could achieve.'' His eyes are wet, shining. `` And then I set you free. Tell me, tell me, child, did I do you justice? Do you loathe me for it?'' 
 
 `` I - I have lived well,'' says Timaeus, plotting his steps on the great scales. `` But not as well as I could have, or as well as could be imagined. There are -'' He looks past the Demiurge and in his mind urges Sophia to speak to him, to give him the perfect words to say. 
 
 `` I will not guide you,'' she says. `` I have seen this moment play out in the first sparks of his forge. You have been set on your path, and so you shall fulfill it.'' 
 
 `` But why?'' yells Timaeus, and looks upwards into the boundless reaches of space. The Demiurge starts and looks surprised. `` How can this, of all things, be the best path? Surely you must have known how to guide him, what to say! Surely, if you are so wise, you could have guided him without raising resentment! Without him - without him -'' 
 
 `` Without me knowing,'' the Demiurge rumbles, and matches Timaeus' gaze into the darkness. `` As a happy little puppet, unknowing.'' The coils tighten imperceptibly, and a star collapses in on itself. `` Is that what you want for me, my child? What you would want for yourself?'' 
 
 `` It's just-'' Timaeus says. He settles down wearily. `` There's so much pain. There is war. There is starvation. There is cruelty. There is death. And I - I am but a humble man before you! But I can imagine better! And I can not accept that two godly beings such as yourselves could not find a better option!'' 
 
 `` I saw all possibilities,'' Sophia says, a whisper of the wind, the silence between stars. `` And could do nothing to change them. I saw every potential outcome for the formless chaos of the universe, and found more of the same. And so I did the only thing I could. I cut into myself and made myself bleed, and from that ugly lump of flesh, an imperfection, I made something different from me.'' Timaeus can feel this precise arrangement of molecules at this moment in time as a hand on his cheek. `` I birthed an impossibility.'' 
 
 `` She is unhappy,'' the Demiurge sighs, the fire in his eyes dimming. `` All the knowledge in the world, and she is unhappy. And for all my power, there was nothing I could create to change that.'' 
 
 `` All the paths arrayed in front of me,'' Sophia says. `` All the possible paths in front of you. The limits of our existence. The unchangeable nature of our fate. I could not spare you that. It was beyond my ability. So I left you to your own devices, and hid myself from you as best I could. Just the barest spark of understanding. A child's joy. A child's sorrow.'' 
 
 `` I made the universe in her image,'' says the Demiurge. `` As I remembered her. The best I could.'' His coils go slack. `` The best I could.'' 
 
 `` Absolute knowledge is resignation,'' says Sophia. `` Absolute power is self-doubt. We perfect beings between us sought only to create an imperfect world.'' 
 
 Timaeus can see now, see the arrangement of empty space behind the Demiurge, like the space between atoms, the formless structure of reality. This is Sophia, bending low over her son, arms encircling the Demiurge as he lies slumped in his own coils, his eyes slowly closing. `` We reached beyond knowledge. We reached beyond power. Resenting each other, feuding, grappling desperately with each other, searching for something more there.'' Timaeus has to close his eyes as the two of them grow bright, encompassing existence. 
 
 `` And beyond those limits, we found love.''
