“The shutdown procedure won’t work”, Shiva looked down at his wife; her head was in his lap as they sat in the orchard, enjoying themselves.

“What do you mean?”, she looked up at him.

“The allotted time will soon expire, and the Jewel won’t be able to terminate the simulation because of all the souls that have been plugged into the system; and I don’t mean the incarnated ones. I mean those that will be used as power cells to power attractors and scripts”.

“And he won’t do it because it would kill them instantly, and he is not allowed to do something like that”, she nodded.

“And as the time expires, it will be up to him, so he will keep running the simulation indefinitely, unless we do something about it”.

“We knew that was going to happen”, she nodded. “And if we force-terminate, we incur the karmic penalty, which would be large, considering the number of angels he deceived”.

“Too large. Also, the mess is too large to just dump all at once. It would be almost impossible to clean up here. Some of it actually requires incarnation in the physical in order to process, because that’s how it’s designed. And he protected himself from access from within the system in all sorts of ways. Every single person who tried, ended up either failing miserably, or was destroyed”.

“It’s actually dangerous for us. There is a significant probability not just of failure, but of his victory and our destruction”, Goddess warned.

“I know. That’s what he is betting on. He went into the entire thing knowing there’s a chance that his handiwork won’t ever be terminated, and the only solution to the dilemma would be to make him some kind of a ruler of both Heaven and Earth”, Shiva was grim.

“By ‘a chance’, you mean limit in zero, but non-zero?”, she smiled.

“One in 10²⁷”, he nodded. “But the probability of the sum total of all possible disasters is much larger. It’s one in three”.

“That bad, huh?”, she looked concerned.

“That bad”, he confirmed.

“But if we don’t intervene, it guarantees a bad outcome of some kind?”, she squeezed his hand and looked in his eyes.

“In a word, yes. But if we intervene and fail, it opens up the possibility of the worst possible outcome”.

“Do I even want to know?”, she grinned.

“I don’t think so”, he smiled his lopsided smile, her favourite.

“You lead, I follow; like always”, she smiled.

“This will require some planning”, Shiva nodded.

…

“Zee, come here”, Kay gestured with urgency. “Take a look at this”.

“Wow, they are good. Not only did they lure Sanat Kumar into exposing himself to lethal karmic consequences so he’s dead now, but they managed to get that astral sub-plane for godless souls back under the Throne, and they wiped it clean of assholes”, he nodded appreciatively. “The cost to them personally must be terrible, but they sure are kicking ass”.

“The odds of success are now hundred percent for a sum total of all good outcomes. Over ninety percent for the best outcome”, the Mind of God smiled. “And the odds are improving with time, as there is increasingly less stuff that can harm them, and they are getting increasingly stronger”.

“So, basically, it can no longer end badly, and it’s now a grind until the end, deciding how much of the mess they convert into their own soul mass, and how much will stay there and slowly rot away?”, he scratched his temple.

“It’s more complicated than that, and better”, she kissed him. “Let me explain”.

…

He had to keep running those accursed scripts until the end, but at least he no longer had to put up with Satan’s obnoxious person. The Lord and Lady weren’t happy with him for executing all of Sanat Kumar’s orders well after the villain was dead, but unfortunately, being dead doesn’t preclude being in power. There was nothing in the contract that said anything about valid orders ceasing to be valid if one who issued them happened to die.

Also, both of them were in grim mood because of all they had to endure down there. Especially his Lady. She wasn’t so used to terrible suffering as the Lord, and cursed him occasionally for existing. He didn’t blame her, but hoped he’ll be able to apologise. He missed her playing with him.

…

“It’s almost time”, Lord Vishnu pulled his Lady up from the grass. “Let’s come and greet them”.