Title: Abstract

Summary: In cosmic apathy, where planets spun along their aphelia and carved careful elliptical pathways, there were not gods to turn dials, and Earth was a one-in-a-million, chemically volatile mass of celestial rock. [Kyle centric, and a subjective religious speculative-- through everyone's favorite skeptic.]

AN: The title comes from a game my English teacher introduced to me. (And, unbelievably enough, it is essentially evil, yet inspiring. D: ) Also, I'm gonna call this AU, since they did meet God somewhere along the line, but no one appears to care in-canon so . . .

So one of these nights and about twelve o'clock
This old world's going to reel and rock
Saints will tremble and cry for pain
For the Lord's gonna come in his heavenly airplane

- One of Us, Joan Osborne

Somewhere around nine years old, Kyle Broflovski found God-- he remembered that it was along the barren aisles of a train headed towards Denver, full of blending, distanced smiles and abandoned streaks of rust cowering beneath the seats. The glass wept chills against his curious fingertips, and he briefly tasted the all-encompassing of the "natural world", shocked as he wrenched it away and felt cold burn rush through him. It throbbed a fusion of delicate heat and pain, the skin raw from thermodynamic impact and energy caught in transit; he sunk deep into the stiff cushioning, drowning in a personal silence.

"What's the matter, Kyle?" His mother added as she wrestled a frustrated, flailing Ike into his seat, who fought against her with morose babbling and teary sniffs.

He was pulled back to reality, ". . . Mom, what if God had a face?" His mother returned his query with understandable impassivity, before flashing a knowing smile.

"I don't know, Kyle. If God had a face, what would you say to him?" Kyle didn't know either.

It would be three years until he dared to cross into the both morally and institutionally forbidden and question faith again; the dreidel spun on its axle, balanced precariously via the awkwardly defined principles of time and gravity-- a blur of earthy-red clay, caught amid webs of scientific reasoning.

"Heh, thanks for playing, Jew-boy!" Eric's voice was rough behind his Cheshire cat grin, and he dragged his winnings across the counter-- Kenny, the unlucky and natural born loser incarnate, groaned as he watched the unjust exchange before burying his head in his arms. "Damn, dreidel is actually pretty cool-- when it's got some Christian spin on it, eh?"

"That's because you're winning, fatass," Kyle affirmed, Eric too captivated with the scent of glorious currency to care. He swallowed a sigh, elbow propped up and his chin resting in his hand, and forced his wandering mind to consider the insinuations of sacrilege by betting on the probability of "hitting up" certain holy phrases-- admittedly, he had never pursued the origins of the dreidel. Their Jewish vestige was the close relative of a gambler's plaything.

His thoughts were listless: maybe the luck involved, be it in survival or otherwise, proved bizarrely tantamount to god, the universe, and all its unpredictability.

Sun streamed through the windows and smiled on the beaten, cream-colored linoleum some two years afterward; the desks were lined in uniformly imperfect rows, crowded with teenage bodies scattered across their tops. There was no order-- only the paradigms of young society and a forgotten claim to routine. 'You are just as happy as everyone else thinks you are,' rang true in his school halls, because South Park conservatism clung to stigmata. It was laughable how things never died there-- they festered, paying tribute to putrefaction in an eternal loop, and centripetal in that everything moved towards the center and was then dutifully swallowed by it.

'Small town mindsets are the kind that destroy themselves,' he mused, and watched the clouds dance along the skyline in the distance. There was no need for that much attachment to the past-- he felt his insides recoil, and it left him wondering why he knew the rituals, but not the dogma.

After all, where was the meaning without the belief, and where was the religion without the doctrine?

Astronomy, when joined with the concept of philosophy, sent him running into intellectual back roads; the incongruity that was complete egotism versus complete triviality. He found that the planets revolve around the sun and the sun revolves around man, thus shedding light on humanity's idiosyncrasies. There was something eerie about the vastness of the universe in comparison to the diminutive human mind, although not surprising-- the brain was oftentimes arbitrary, and, comparable to computers, proven obsolete.

He figured the fact you "couldn't" replace it (due to problems moral, scientific, or otherwise) every few years was the sole discrepancy, otherwise he would have suggested Cartman be switched out long ago. Kyle sneered and cursed Eric's religious, hypocritical fanaticism-- in cosmic apathy, where the planets spun along their aphelia and carved careful elliptical pathways, there were not gods to turn dials, and Earth was a one-in-a-million, chemically volatile mass of celestial rock.

It was kind of a nice thought, at least in retrospect, that god kept to himself.

AN: Well, there you go. :D (Yeah. I could opt to be more passionate here, but this thing annoyed the crap out of me about half way through. It still feels unfinished.) Read and review?

. . . That aside, I don't understand Kyle's religious annotation in fandom. D: He said himself that he doesn't believe in the supernatural, and all gods must be directly associated with said concept. No metaphysical beings with control =/= no strong attachment to god, basically. (XD C'mon, he's the only kid in class taking notes on that evolution lecture simply because he loves total rationality . . . but with friends like Eric Cartman, who can blame him? D: Seriously, exposure to that kind of extremism is liable to squash all the faith out of him, considering he's barely beyond borderline now.)

His attachment to religious practices seems much more closely tied to his family and sense of community, in my opinion. (Hence the use of "my people" constantly [in his arguments with Eric], but never-- or possibly rarely?-- "my religion/views".) D: Alas, there's no way to know what the developers intended for him. (Those being the very same developers that all characters in this piece belong to. :D)