My version of the story of evil:
A group of children awoke on a spaceship travelling to an unknown destination. The children came out of a sort of coma, a stasis in which their age and faculties were preserved till the moment the spaceship had gone a certain distance.
There were no windows out into space. The children did not know where or why they were, only that they were awake and there was a shiny, metallic environment to explore. The children were old enough to speak and they all spoke the same language. They began to mentally map the spaceship and each other.
There were many children of all shapes, sizes, and colours. On the ship there were various stations that glowed a silvery yellow and made faint beeping sounds. At these stations the children found food, water, and a set of mechanisms which changed the qualities of whatever was shown on the screen above the station.
The children giggled as they ate, spoke, and played with the stations’ controls. Up to four children could sit at a station and contribute to the image on the screen. After pulling a specific lever the children discovered that the thing created would move, make sounds, and interact with other things that the children created. They even discovered that they could alter how the thing moved, sounded, and interacted with its environment.
Soon the children were busy at work creating. They created suns, planets, creatures, rivers, plants, and things we cannot describe with English. The children were delighted to find that creations were observable in the other stations; that they were all creating within the same universe.
After a certain period of time the stations all shut down uniformly. Ports opened in the walls of the spaceship and glowed with an ice blue and chimed with irresistible lullabies. Drawn to the cozy ports, the children soon all slept. The wake up call repeated after a certain time and the children were soon busy at creating again.
After many cycles of creating and watching their creations destroy, procreate, and exist, the children began to wonder who could create the greatest thing in the universe. A competition ensued and every child submitted a great creation. There was no unanimous great creation and the children grew frustrated. Their universe began to rumble and tremble as the children continued to compete.
Eventually the children decided it was no use because they had no way of measuring the greatest creation. So, naturally, the children decided they needed criteria and another competition began: who could create the worst thing in the universe?
The children worked feverishly to create worse things than the next. They created horrible creatures, diseases, wars, heartbreaks and all other manner of things they sometimes understood. But still no child could create the absolute worst thing in their universe.
Soon though, the children noticed a child who sat at his station and simply watched the universe unfold. He never created anything or participated in the children’s competitions.
–“Why don’t you help us create things?” the children asked him.
–“Because I like to watch and think about your creations,” he replied.
–“Well, what do you think the worst thing is?” they asked, hoping to get his judgement.
–“The worst thing in all of creation would have to be…” he continued with a long and terrifying story.
After he was done a few children began to yell angrily at him that none of that should ever be created. Others began to cry. Most simply looked at him sullen and silent. Eventually they all agreed that that was the worst thing they’ve ever heard, but at least no one had created it.
–“We have now” he said.
The friend I told the story simply said “OK, but what happened after?” I don’t know I said. He’d been quite insistent on critiquing the feasibility of the whole spaceship thing so it was kind of difficult to tell a coherent version of the story, but I do think his last question is quite appropriate. The question touches on continuing after trauma and what could be more traumatic than the most evil, bad thing ever created (or imagined?) And then I thought maybe the best, or most good thing would then be existing after and in spite of such evil? And how do we do that? Likely by acknowledging, remembering, and learning from it with stories.