For the second time (or maybe it’s the third?) this millennia, I sat at the helm of a vast transdimensional army, preparing for another scorched earth campaign that would leave countless mortals and immortals dead. The Empty-Harvesters made up the backbone of my force, led by their newest war-queen, my new bride Kalpana Calloway.

The rest of my army was made up of Jack’s fadelings, terrifying semi-organic, semi-mechanical, entities of shadow and darkness. As well as, countless constructs created by me and the Division of Cosmic Artifice. Also, there was something between 10 million and 20 million true-dragons and powerful draconic creatures accompanying us. For some reason, Empress Kian had been adamant about assisting us in this endeavor which was a pleasant surprise, and welcome aid, even if it was all a bit sudden and unexplained.

You’d think suddenly being asked to take charge of not 1, not 2, but a full 122 multiverses would be something of a huge deal. I mean, these were “true” multiverses, each multiverse containing a nearly infinite number of universes. Each universe contained countless stars and planets. Many of those planets we were taking charge of, came with sapient and non-sapient life that we were expected to look after.

This was less an unexpecting babysitting job, and more like someone giving you a nearly infinite supply of diarrhea-afflicted dogs and cats. In other words, this was less a gift, and more a huge, ongoing, problem that had been tossed onto the laps of me, Jack, and Kalpana without warning. Or at least, you’d think so, but well, that’d only be the case, if any of us had any real intentions of trying to “run” all those worlds.

Instead of trying to reinvent the wheel, Jack, Kalpana, and I, decided to turn to the wisdom of those who’d come before. I.E. the House of Antipodes, the Division of Cosmic Artifice, and to a (much) lesser degree, those poor bastards in the Dark Bell Collective and Dark Song Orchestra. One could often learn almost as much from those who screwed up, as one learned from those who did a thing successfully.

Especially, when you had ample samples of both types of examples to compare and contrast against one another. Studying in this way, our little group quickly realized two things. One) We could not, would not, play deity, in any shape or form. Two)It was fine to be relatively hands-off and let others do the bulk of the work.

The first realization came from the failures of the Dark Bell Collective, and the problems that still continued to plague the Dark Song Orchestra. It was also based on what we had observed in the Shattered Heavens, as well as historical narratives absorbed from my Empty-Archive. Put plainly, being a “god” within the cosmos was never that good a prospect. It was a relatively “easy” route for immortality and power to be sure, but the negatives far outweighed the consequences. Nine times out of ten going all “a god am I” ends in some kind of backlash, whether societal, karmic, or from the very cosmos itself.

In those rare times, that one managed to attain godhood it came with chains and innumerable burdens. Even with her ego and thirst for power, Jack had never once desired to be a goddess of darkness. The reasoning behind this was demonstrated, when our probability bombs went off and a majority of the beings that would have opposed us, went “poof” along with the worlds, cultures, and peoples that they were supposed to be deities of. The pretender-gods were those the cosmos chose to put to work instead of erasing them. If they failed their jobs, there was no longer a reason for them to continue testing the cosmos’ patience.

Aside from that huge glaring weakness, there were other reasons that there’d never be any kind of Calloway pantheon. It was actually some damned hard work. Even the more aloof gods, spent their days busy with various sorts of labor. I was joking when I said that godhood was the cosmos putting its most exceptional irritants to work.

If you were going to be a god of a thing, then you had to fully embrace all the duties therein. The Dark Bell Collective and the Dark Song Orchestra’s leadership were mostly made up of gods and goddesses, which honestly wasn’t "too" different from the House’s setup. However, those two groups really leaned into that facet of things, actually, running themselves like large-scale pantheons.

This came with the consequence of making them both highly vulnerable to changes within the state of their territory, and thoroughly preoccupied with the minutiae of running their territories. This meant a lot of them were killed, or at least, heavily weakened with the loss of their territories, and those that weren’t had to spend precious time desperately trying to put out the fires we’d started before they could properly face us. Imagine kicking in the door of someone’s bathroom and getting to attack them, while they’re stuck having to finish properly wiping, flushing, plunging, and mopping the floor, before they can properly defend themselves?

These glaring issues, and a few others, were why, despite their general sense of superiority when dealing with other types of immortals, most cosmic administrative bodies, would either leave key roles to non-deities, or have those roles filled by deities with domains broad and/or vague enough to allow them to be uninhibited by such issues, and most of the deities within those groups were generally okay with it.

A god was generally too busy being a god to do much else. Sometimes it even robbed them of their personhood, which could be considered a kind of death in and of itself. They couldn’t and wouldn’t recklessly accept more burdens, especially if it wasn’t going to come with a cosmos-granted amount of power and authority.

Learning from the successes of the House of Antipodes, the Division of Cosmic Order, and similar venerable groups within our cosmos, taught us to be hands-off off. It was fine to be a “little” tyrannical at times. Sometimes a firm hand was the most preferable way to resolve an issue, or keep issues from arising. Most times though, it was preferable to be a reasonable authority. Someone who listens, someone to whom problems can be brought, someone who could on occasion even be argued with.

One could argue that hawkish authoritarianism was just one tool amongst many, but it was one that inevitably estranged you from those you were supposed to be leading. If you treat your subjects like a dangerous “other” long enough, eventually they will be. So one needed to be careful about when and how one stepped on a person’s neck.

Watching the flow of history through my Empty-Archive, I was able to watch how the House of Antipodes was able to walk the tightrope of being an unassailable, but reasonable authority within our segment of the cosmos for countless years. It wasn’t hard to rule immortals. Many of them were rulers of their own powers before ascending. Ego was always a big concern. Can you imagine what’s it like to deal with a room full of people whose life trajectories included an evolution from king, to reputational god-king, to literal god-king?

The Three Misters that ran the house, Mister Bright, Mister Gray, and Mister Dark would often alternate between just another immortal amongst peers, and making the ground creak from the sheer weight of their existences. The House as a whole did a great magic trick, of stooping so they weren’t too much higher than the ones they were governing, but making it obvious that they “were” stooping.

Doing things that way, meant that oftentimes instead of making overt threats, or using the inherent authority to force an issue, all they needed to do was roll their shoulders and laughingly complain about how much their knees and back hurt “crouching” as they were every day. Making it clear that the perfectly civil conservation that they were having, was so, at the House’ beneficence, not theirs.

The Division taught us the most useful lessons, because we saw how one could pull many of the tricks the House pulled, without actually being present. Many people knew of the division, but few actually knew what they were. I’d learned that it wasn’t unusual for many to not even know who or what the division actually was. In a lot of ways, the Division operated inversely to the way the house did. They were above it all, but generally not so present in the political environs that they presided over, that those beneath them were usually able to operate relatively freely.

Some folk thought they were laissez-fair. Some folk believed them bureaucratic dictatorships that drowned the worlds in red tape. Neither belief was true, but the Division made purposeful efforts to give credibility to both interpretations.

Unlike the house, which did a great job of being a giant stooping low to allow the men to at least see its chin, the Division operated so high-up and distantly, that after a few eons, their power was just flatly unquestioned. Part of that was creating a system of rule that was sustainable, just proactive enough that people couldn’t create countless loopholes inside it, and reactive enough that the idiots that tried to go against your rules, quickly became a cautionary tale for everyone else.

The Division was so good at this, that they were able to almost fully automate the process. Leaving a lot of the management of their territories in the hands of the artificial-intelligences and powerful constructs that they’d created. They still had people keeping an eye on the worlds they ruled, and they also had people observing, checking, and double-checking the system, with even more people observing the observers of the world, and the observers of the systems, to avoid corruption. (Rumor says, they even had observers of the observers.) However, the total amount of hands they had on deck at any one moment was far less than you’d expect, and far less than the House normally had governing its own worlds.

Interestingly enough, both the House and the Division had far fewer people working for them than you’d expect for groups that secretly ran the mortal and immortal worlds of both universes. This was because they generally allowed the worlds to govern themselves. The authority of the native gods, devils, and myriad immortals within their territories was generally unrestricted.

Part of this was because both groups were so ridiculously powerful that they could easily and soundly crush any opposition, or attempts at revolt. Part of this, was because they both did what I was about to do now, going to their territories, taking a proper accounting of the place, and then cleaning and re-adjusting the native power structures, so that all that was left was a bunch of sub-powers that would act according to the will of the House and the Division.