5 I became a God... of creation? (2)

"Ehhh... Crust... Crust... Should I just pile on more stuff?! How the hell do I make a solid, crispy crust, with just the right texture?" Karl asked himself regretfully — he really should have paid more attention in geography classes.

[Resolvable question detected. Memory retrieval necessary. Confirm?]

"Memory retrieval? Sounds fancy, do it!" Karl decided without giving it too much thought. If this could help him get back on track with some hidden, unconscious knowledge about plate tectonics it would be for the best.

["...now brush the top carefully with some fresh egg yolk. Don't be too stingy! Brush it all up and bake it in the oven for another 20 minutes. That's it, the secret to a perfect crust, with just the right texture..."]

...

"Yo! What's wrong with you?! And I almost believed I would actually get a helpful reply for once... Do you think this is funny? Screw you, System! Screw you!" Karl shouted furiously. How naïve he was, falling for this deceptive son of a system again and again. He would have to utilize his own brain in order to tackle this problem after all.

"Alright Karl, you got this! If you were a giant, boiling-hot orb of magma drifting through space, what would you do? I did not think I would be saying this one day..." he pondered.

There were not that many options, really. What was a young planet, fresh from the forge, supposed to do anyway? Sit there for some billions of years to cool off? He did not really want to wait that long though...

"Wait, who said I would need to wait for that? System, cool off the outer layers to form a solid crust!" he demanded as soon as inspiration hit him. The planet was supposed to be modeled after his wishes, so this should have some manner of effect — if he was lucky, maybe he could get it all done in one swoop.

Just as expected, the 'shell' began to darken considerably and slowly solidified in huge chunks, which in turn cracked at places to reveal fresh streams of bubbling lava, making their way to the surface. Being frozen in place directly from its seething state, the new-formed crust was covered in large bumps and indentations from place to place, several soon-to-be continents already vaguely recognizable.

While he was still in the flow, he collected most of the leftover minerals to form two small satellites to orbit around the newborn planet. The moon — or rather, the moons. Pale and round, to decorate the night sky of this new world he was creating.

"I always thought it was kind of a waste to have only one of these, now I can finally make it right!" he said while observing the swirling spheres of stone.

"And it's finally time to get the water in for some nice little oceans! Saltwater, naturally!" God Karl spoke and the flood descended immediately.

Just like the image in his head, all of the depressions of the planet swiftly filled up with liquid blue, that flowed and frothed into every tiny crack previously formed on the earthen shell. This would be the oceans and seas of his future planet, home to myriads of mysterious creatures lurking in its depths.

"Almost there! Put the sand in the ocean and the mud on the land! Let there be glaciers on the poles and rivers parting the land between towering mountains — just like my old home used to have!" Karl declared full of authority. He was slightly swayed by the process and was beginning to lose himself in his new work.

"Wait, why is the ocean boiling? Did I forget anything? It certainly is not too hot anymore... No, wait! The atmosphere!" he realized his fallacy just in time to fix it and almost instantaneously a hurricane of gases flowed towards the young planet and covered it like a thin blanket.

Karl had no idea what a proper atmosphere needed and what was taboo, but he kept repeating the line "Make it like earth! Make it like earth!" in his head and apparently, that got the job done... Good to know, now that he was almost done.

Soon, a small planet, already recognizable as such, drifted along in the void peacefully. It was not a direct copy of earth, but close. The continents were completely different and on closer inspection, the whole thing was shaped a bit like an egg or a potato while also being a bit smaller than the original earth. The interior not considered, which Karl was still worried about, the most striking difference that instantly caught the eye of any observer would be the complete lack of greenery.

"The land, the sea, and the sky, all done. Yet it is kinda dark down there, now that I think about it." Karl observed and did not need to ponder long to discover the reason — the sun! Or rather, the absence of it. He thought for a moment about how to fix this issue but quickly decided to give up on solving this logically — He was God now. There was nothing logical about that, so why bother?

"Let there be light!" Karl spoke.

Naturally, he already expected the system to have a built-in solution to tackle this issue and he was not wrong about it for once.

[Applying preset orbital settings] the monotone voice of the system echoed in his head and the scenery changed once again.

From out of nowhere, the first thing he had noticed in this strange, dark world appeared in his field of vision — the small yellow sun that had still been circling around Terrania back then.

"Better, but still weird. Why is it such a strange feeling to see the sun orbiting the earth — and it being the size of the moon, as a matter of fact?!" he analyzed the situation.

He was much too old to change from his heliocentric world view now — this thing had to go! (Even if it was indeed a viable solution for his initial problem)

"The sun goes there and my planet here aaand... No, this doesn't work either, it is much to dim now that it is so far away," he remarked, with the awe-inspiring image of his former sun in mind — and the celestial body began to expand like a balloon to fit this image. It did not even need any materials to do so. Clearly, it was just a hollow tool, provided by the system for lighting purposes.

"A bit brighter still and... yes, just like that! Now I just need a stable orbit and with a last spin... It's done!" he proclaimed joyfully.

In the beginning, there was nothing. Chaos populated the void. The chaos gave birth to one. One gave birth to two. Two gave birth to three and three gave birth to all of creation.

In the beginning Karl created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, "Let there be light!" and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.