It is an odd paradox. I could destroy but I could not recreate, and, having destroyed, I wanted to repent. But there was no way I could recreate women.

The whole world, as a consequence, bored me. I went home that night and I got drunk; then I willed the world out of existence.

All of it; all, of course, but me. I floated off into the void, and the sun had only eight planets.

My body became cumbersome. I just floated. I willed my body out of existence—it was only a figment of my imagination, anyway. Then I could travel at the speed of thought itself—I could leave that laggard, light, far far behind.

But first I had a job to do. I looked at Mercury. Scorched on one side, frozen on the other, it was dead. Venus was a world of swamps—primitive, uninteresting life. Mars had an old and a dead culture, a dying world now. Nothing beyond— The solar system of eight planets bored me. I willed it out of existence.

The sun looked all alone. I destroyed it.

The Centauri double-star system was even worse. No life there at all, not even planets. I passed it by in a huff, putting an end to its useless existence.

On a planet circling Deneb, hundreds of light years away, I found humanoid life. It was easy to will an essence-without-quididity out of existence and take over its body. I did, but unfortunately, I did not know the ways of this world. They adjudged me insane and they put me in what I suppose was an asylum for the insane. It was interesting at first, but after a time, I became bored with it.

I destroyed it.

They became angry, and they marshalled all sorts of weapons against me. I destroyed the weapons. They became very angry indeed, but it was a meaningless, impotent anger.

I grew restless.

I destroyed them. Destroyed their world. Deneb seemed alone, as the sun had seemed. I destroyed Deneb.

Actually, I was amazed to find how many lifeless star systems there were, and how unsatisfying those that had life could be. I began to think that all this creation for my benefit had been a serious mistake. It could be rectified, of course; I willed the galaxy out of existence.