The Book of Barney

A reading from a Letter to the Corinthians, written on fine Corinthian leather.

(Extracted via the science of Numerology, sequencing together every 5th letter from the book of Genesis, and moving 2 letters back, listing the numerical placement of said letters in the alphabet, multiplying by the numerical placement of the next vowel, then picking the letter coming the closest in whole numbers to the square root of the alphabetical numerical placement of the answer. The punctuation could only be guessed at.)

Chapter One

It was a booming voice. And it said:

1. In the beginning there was nothing. And it's value was zero. And nothing was unstable.

2. And so it passed that something virtually happened. And it was big, and it rapidly filled all that there is. And into this expansion grew length, width, depth, and time. And a, and e, and i, o, u...

…and sometimes y.

3. And the infinitesimal gathered. And then there were clumps. And the clumps grew crowded and warm. And the clumps drew upon their surroundings to grow denser yet. And so it went until the clumps were dense enough for thermonuclear fusion. And then there was light!

And it was good.

4. And there were thousands and millions of points of light in all that there is, and the shadows blended into the blackness that lay between each point. And the giga-watt-centuries that arose from these points grew fainter as they lost all strength, until their girth could not be supported by their bellowing energy. And so they collapsed. They collapsed more so than is imaginable, until the very infinitesimal in the clumps could not withstand the constraint. And there arose from the centers immense measures of heat and density, which burdened the infinitesimals with yet more electron shells until there was...

Carbon...among other things.

And it was good.

5. And then, in the beginning, there was murk.And the new burning clumps shined hard and long on the murk. And atmospheric turbulence begot incendiary lightning, which fell out of the sky, and the ammonia begot amino acids and peptides. And there were bonds. And co-dependency issues.

And it was good.

6. It came to pass that there was sentience and self-awareness. And the soup yielded the four-legged ones who renounced their gills and scorned their blow-holes. And there arose wicked times, with creature devouring creature until only the smartest and fastest and strongest were fruitful and multiplied.

7. And there were those who stood erect.

Darwin and Pfizer would have been pleased.

8. And yea I say unto you that the flame was harnessed, and the wheel, and the pulley.

And the fulcrum didn't hurt none either.

Or moveable type. Or penicillin.

9. And behold, there were harnessed cathode rays which were displayed onto a tube.

And it was not good.

The booming voice continued:

10. And so it came to pass that the Lord appeared to an unknown face in the throng, and spoke thusly:

"You will put on a dinosaur suit of purple, and espouse only good virtues to anyone who will listen. But your faithful will only be children, for adults will want to kill you. And you shalt be called, Barney."11. And the chosen one appeared on the cathode ray tube, and preached goodness, and love, and sincerity, and friendship, and right from wrong. And the children listened. And Barney grew very strong in his followers. And he went into a prime time morning slot, and his ratings were high.

And this was very good.

12. And he appeared to many. He began appearing at supermarket openings, and mall celebrations. Until roving bands of hostile and acneiform teen-age youths roughed him up. And he walked up the steps to a CEO of a major production company, who washed his hands of him.

13. And Barney was no more. But his message lived on in syndication. And it was good.