Previous Chapters: Creation. The Fall.
THE FLOOD
Ten generations passed after the man and the woman were banished from the campus. Left to their own devices, the issue of Adam and Eve could not command their space and were beset at every turn by Bias. And Diversity looked upon her works once again, and realized that her earlier and later issue had grown hopelessly intermingled, and neither could be extricated from the wicked totality, and she rued that she had ever gotten into the creation game, and resolved to send a flood to wipe the earth clean.
But Noah found favor in the eyes of Diversity, for his thoughts were free of Bias, and his hands never idle, and Diversity’s heart was moved by his devotion to her, so she decided to spare him and his family. She instructed him to build a great ark, and to do so rapidly, but Noah complained that her instructions were in cubits, but his ruler was in feet and inches, and she told him to do his best, and then, when he was done, to gather diverse species of living creatures, cis-male and cis-female, and bring them into the ark in order to repopulate the earth after the flood. “But why,” Noah inquired, “must the creatures be paired cis-male and cis-female? Why not pair them by their identities? Cannot species repopulate the earth with like and like?”
“No,” Diversity replied, “for like and like is not diverse.”
“But if cis-male and cis-female is the norm, is not like and like more diverse?”
So Diversity pondered the matter, and she said, “Do what you think is right.”
Thus, Noah built a great ark and brought onto the ark the myriad creatures of earth, two by two: cis-male and cis-female lion, cis-male and cis-female tiger, cis-male and cis-female bear, but then, at the very end, to be more diverse, he brought aboard a cis-male and trans-female unicorn. After these myriad creatures had been secured, he brought aboard his wife and his three sons, and the wives of his three sons—and among his sons and the wives of his sons, unbeknownst to Noah, that very Bias who had inspired the flood also came aboard. Then Diversity sealed the ark even as the first drops of rain began to fall.
For forty days and forty nights the rain fell, and the floodwaters rose, until even the highest peaks of the earth were covered, and every living creature outside the ark perished, and the only survivors were those in the ark, and the demon Bias that dwelled among them.
Then Diversity remembered her faithful servant Noah, so she sent a dry wind across the face of the earth, and the waters receded, and the ark came to rest on the side of a mountain, and Noah and his family and the myriad creatures he had saved rejoiced, and the following morning Diversity told Noah to come out of the ark, and to bring out his family, and the myriad creatures he had saved, so he opened the ark, and the repopulation of the earth began. And Diversity established a covenant with Noah and his descendants never again to flood the entire earth, and as a sign of that covenant, she showed Noah a rainbow and said, “Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it, and I will remember my everlasting covenant with all living creatures of every kind on the earth.”
Thus, the rainbow came to symbolize the everlasting covenant with Diversity.