L. Stanley Farr, "Stan," had grown increasingly frustrated in the last several years. He had invented a time machine, and wanted to use it to right the wrongs of the past, to prevent evil from being accomplished. But no matter what he did, no matter what the evil was that he prevented, when he returned to the present he would discover that his actions had made the world significantly worse. He decided to prevent Anton Vinck from gaining power, but that only led to a more brutal dictator, Helmut Tholcke, taking his place. He tried to get rid of Tholcke, and that only led to another leader, Adolf Hitler, trying to conquer the world and wipe out certain people groups. Every evil he tried to prevent ended up creating a much greater evil in its place.
Stan began travelling farther and farther back in time to try to correct the consequences of his actions, but everything had even worse results than what he was trying to combat. Eventually, he found himself travelling back to prehistoric times, before human beings existed in their present form. Then even further back, to before the Cambrian Explosion, before the origin of life on earth. Eventually, he set his time machine for 15 billion years in the past and turned the key.
He found himself in a void, with no physical objects he could discern. He brought his hand to his face, and discovered that he didn't have any hands. He had no body. And he realized that he had accidentally travelled back in time to before the Big Bang, before the creation of matter and energy and space and time. He was alone in an undifferentiated eternal moment.
"Not alone," said a voice.
"Wait, what?" Stan asked. "Who are you?"
The answer came immediately, several billion years later: "I am who I am. Who else would you expect?"
"You mean you're ... God?"
"Yes."
"Well, how do I get out of here? I mean, how do I get back to my time?"
He had to wait forever before the answer came within moments: "I'm afraid you can't return to time until I create the universe. Then you will have to live through it sequentially."
"You mean you can't return me to my time?"
"I can but I won't."
"What? Why not?"
"For the same reason you should never have tried to make things better by changing the past: it would create a far worse situation than before."
"How do you know?"
"It comes with the whole omniscience thing."
"That isn't fair. In fact, the whole universe isn't fair. All I ever tried to do was to make it better, to take away some of the suffering -- the suffering that you created. Who do you think you are?"
"God."
"But what gives you the right to cause all that suffering?"
"I didn't cause it. You did."
"But the world was already messed up before I tried to change it."
"There were reasons why things were the way they were. I allowed certain evils to take place -- allowed, not caused -- because if they did not, even worse evils happen."
"So it's all my fault? Trying to make things better is a bad thing according to you? Now you can't bring good out of the evil?"
"Of course I can still bring good out of the evil. I'm God."
"Yet you can't send me back to my time."
"Will not; not cannot."
"This is wrong. You're wrong. You have no right to create a universe with all that suffering in it."
"Yes I do."
"Well, you're talking to someone who travelled back in time to stop bad things from happening. As far as I'm concerned, you are the one who makes them happen. So I'm going to do everything I can to stop you. So help me, I will prevent you from carrying out your plans. I will do whatever it takes."
"I know."
"What do you mean you know? How do you know?"
"Again: omniscience."
"Well how are you going to stop me? I don't have a body anymore so you can't hurt me."
Then Stan felt himself moving, if "moving" was an accurate description where there is no space or time. He realized he was being sent away, cast out, cast down, away from the presence of God. And Stan, Louis S. Farr, finally realized who he was.