The creator of all's Arc

Chapter 13 of 13

Noah slept in his vineyard while his sons carried the world forward. The creator watched them leave the mountain and walk into a wide plain. Shem, Ham, and Japheth had grown many children, and those children had children. The creator had asked one thing of them: spread out and fill the earth. Instead they stopped on the plain and stayed. Ham gathered the clans in the flat land. He was the middle brother, the one who had once laughed at his drunk father instead of covering him. That day earned him a curse. Now he pointed at the empty sky and grinned. "Why wander?" he said. "We stay here. We build up, not out." The creator saw the careless spark in him and knew where it would lead. They made bricks from river clay and baked them hard in the sun. They stacked the bricks into layered terraces, each smaller than the one below. The tower climbed. Grand stairways ran up its face. At the top they set a temple. The creator watched it rise toward his heavens, brick by stubborn brick, and felt the old worn feeling return. Japheth stood at the base and studied the sky. He was the peaceful brother, the one who had helped Shem cover their father without looking. "We should scatter," he said. "The land is wide. This is not what we were told." But the crowd's voice drowned him. They wanted one place, one name, one great height. Some of Shem's children knelt at the tower's foot. They had shaped a golden calf crowned with sunlight and set it on an inscribed stone tablet. They bowed to it and called it Marduk. Shem saw them and turned away, sick with shame. He was the honest brother, the one Noah had blessed. He could not stop his own kin from praying to gold. The creator had promised never to flood the earth again. That promise held his hand. He could not wash this away. But he had made humans breakable on purpose, so they could change. He looked at the tower and chose a smaller, sharper strike. A blue-white bolt cracked down from the clear sky. It split the top of the tower. Bricks tumbled. The temple broke open. Then the creator reached into the mouths of the builders and pulled their shared words apart. One man asked for clay and heard only noise. Another shouted and no one understood. The work stopped. Fear spread through the crowd. The clans could no longer speak to each other. Shem's people gathered to Shem. Ham's people gathered to Ham. Japheth's people gathered to Japheth. Each group walked away in a different direction, out across the wide earth at last. Hams line spread south and west. Shems line spread east and central, and japheths line went northern and westward. The creator watched them go. He had forced them apart to keep them from ruin. And he had scattered his test across the whole world.