No, she didn’t literally explode. Though, to be fair, a mortal body having that much divine power pumped into it definitely makes one wish that they had exploded. Anna certainly did.

It would be less painful.

She felt as though her cells were being ripped apart. Every nerve ending in her body was sending a single message to her brain. That of pain. It felt like her organs were boiling inside of her, scorching the tissue around them. Her bones were all cracking and breaking, one after another… and then the power reached her brain.

Then things got Weird.

Anna started seeing through her teeth. She breathed through her skin. She started feeling her wet bones and screamed through her eyes. Her blood turned to syrup and started to taste sweet. She knew this because she was pretty sure that she was bleeding… like from everywhere.

Then things started getting Weirder.

She felt her consciousness start to expand. She saw using grapefruits and heard with bananas. A spatula showed up and slapped her in the face. An endless serpent played banjo for her and an audience of rats. She clapped when the performance ended and found herself bathing in the sun. It was very relaxing.

Then it ended and she was back sitting with an old man in the clouds.

“Oh, dear…” She thought she heard before everything turned black.

God was a bit panicked.

That’s honestly expected when someone passes out in front of you. If you’re not panicked when someone suddenly passes out in front of you for no apparent reason that means you either, A) had something to do with them passing out or, B) you’re a psychopath.

That or a dick.

Of course, God knew the probable reason that Anna had passed out. Messing with someone’s soul tended to do that, but God honestly hadn’t expected this kind of reaction to occur. It was much more violent than he had predicted.

Checking her over, God looked to see if she was ok. He thought that she was fine but, to be honest, he had no way of knowing for sure. Souls were finicky things, especially mortal ones. Even celestials had to be careful with working with them. Unless, of course, they wanted to blow up half of the multiverse.

“Channeling this much power was probably not healthy in any sense,” he muttered. “Should I have been more delicate about it? Maybe infused a bit of it at a time?” As he debated with himself he checked one more time on Anna’s soul.

It looked fine, all things considered. Glowing with a large amount of divine power and intact so God felt that the blessing was successful.

‘I had a few more things I wanted to tell her though…’ He thought a moment before snapping his fingers. “I'll just leave a message!” he said happily. Taking a small amount of power he imprinted with his thoughts and instruction. He then took it and stuck it into the folds of reality.

‘There’s no way she would miss that,’ he reasoned as he looked down at the shining packet of information. ‘And that… should be that, I believe.’

He looked around last time. Taking in the chaotic and passionate race he had created. The endless potential that was available to them. His successor, currently laying… floating next to him, snoring.

“I wish you luck, little godling,” he said with a smile before leaving her plane of reality, heaven dissolving behind him.

When Anna woke up things were different. The first thing she noticed was that she was no longer floating in the clouds above the world and was instead just existing in the abyss that she remembered before.

The second thing she noticed was that the absolute nothing that was the abyss before, was replaced with things. A whole lot of things. In fact, Anna realized it was everything. Distilled down to its most basic and elemental energy.

Potential.

‘And there’s a whole lot of it,’ she observed. It seemed infinite, boundless, endless. All the possible paths, timelines, and universes that humanity could be. The very potential of the human race lay before her in all its glory and as Anna felt her awareness grow to encompass it, she wondered how she knew all of this.

It was at this point that Anna discovered she knew a lot more things than she reasonably should. She knew what the abyss was: a storage place for potential. She also knew that she could manipulate that potential and how to create and destroy using it.

Frankly, it was kind of scary.

It was then that Anna’s senses reached Earth and her mind exploded with new information.

No, again, not literally.

Every molecule, spec, and grain of sand was a deluge of information. She discovered the places where the sand had been, where it was currently, and where it could be going. She took in the complexities of time and space; how they both warped around these mundane features. How atoms collided and split apart in a few moments. The elementary particles that made up the universe were laid bare before her and she struggled to take it in.

Every time she stopped focusing on one thing she would immediately be pulled away to focus on another. First a single molecule, then a lattice of them, a jump to a mote of rock, onto a single cell organism, up to a grain of sand. Each time the item would increase in complexity and size, overwhelming Anna with new information.

She was forced to pull her awareness back. Taking a moment to center herself she opened her eyes. Or at least tried too. Surprised, Anna suddenly realized something disturbing.

She didn’t have a body.

What Anna currently had was… hard to describe. It didn’t look like anything. It didn’t sound like anything either. Actually, trying to describe it with any of the five senses seemed... wrong. Like a concept suddenly having a physical form.

Sure, we say babies are a symbol of innocence, but how do you physically describe innocence itself? It was kinda like that.

Abstract.

It was disturbing because Anna hadn’t felt any discomfort. Nor had it even occurred to her to check to see if she had a body. In fact, she felt quite comfortable in her new form. It was freeing not having to worry about breathing, eating, or even sleeping.

It was also alien and despite her brain telling her that nothing was wrong she couldn’t help but thinking that, rationally, something should be wrong. There was an odd disconnect between what felt like new instincts and old thinking clashing with each other.

Trying to anchor herself, Anna started pulling on the potential around her, warping and mixing it. When Anna opened her eyes she found herself in a small clearing surrounded by a dense forest. She was sunbathing on a flat rock that sat in the middle of the meadow.

The internal conflict was gone and Anna was finally allowed to relax. She laid for a few seconds, just enjoying the warmth. Eventually, though, she had to open her eyes.

She looked up and saw a clear blue sky and, floating above her, was Earth. With its raging storms and great oceans. The sprawling continents and their winding rivers. Where humans lived and built their civilization. It was a beautiful sight and things seemed peaceful from here.

Anna knew it was anything but.

Wars were being waged on that blue marble’s surface. Governments were backstabbing each other. The rich were tramping the poor, and, overall, people were being dicks to one another. It was frankly a mess and, sadly, it was Anna’s mess to clean up now.

Depressing thoughts started to crop up. ‘How the fuck am I going to fix this? I have no idea what I’m doing. I can’t guide governments. I’m no genius that can plan ahead decades!

‘The most I can do is go around and tell countries to stop warring against each other, but that won’t fix anything long term. It will all just move underground and I won’t be able to control it then.

I could place, like, regulations on war and stuff but the UN already does that. Why would I try to take that over? Those people clearly have more experience with it than me.’

Rolling over she groaned. ‘God, you idiot. Why did you have to pick me? There have to be others more qualified than I am.’ She chuckled sadly. ‘Look at me, trying to save a world when I’m not even sure how to get back to it.’

“Some god I am,” She deprecated. “Well, I’m not going to get anything done like this…”

Focusing again Anna tried to reach out to Earth. Taking her time she slowly expanded her awareness. When she felt the first hint of strain she stopped and absorbed the information. Then, once that was processed, she expanded again. She repeated this process for a while, very slowly growing her ability to withstand her godly powers.

She continued like this for a while. It’s hard to say exactly how long. Anna felt like it took weeks but it may have taken only seconds. Either way, an indeterminable amount of time later Anna came across something odd. A strange aura seemed to be slowly dragging itself towards her. It didn’t feel alien per se, but more... unearthly. It felt a bit like God had. Powerful and divine.

Hesitantly Anna grabbed it using her power, surprising herself that she could do that, and drug it back to her little haven, letting it materialize as it got close. It finally fell down in front of her in the form of a packaged letter.

Anna picked it up and looked it over. A white envelope was what greeted her. Turning it over she saw it neat handwriting, from God. She carefully opened it, remembering her first experience meeting God. Flipping open the letter she was met with... A blank page.

It didn’t stay blank for long because as soon as she laid her eyes on it, words started to write themselves and a God’s voice resounded out of the page. ‘Well that’s suitably dramatic,’ she thought.

Dear, Ms. Miller

Before you continue reading any further I must ask you to do two things. First, is to create yourself a body. Second, is to create a sanctuary or heaven: a physical place that your body can reside in while in the abyss.

Anna paused reading as she took a moment to look around her clearing and down at her body. She nodded to herself before continuing.

The reason for this is so that you don’t damage your soul any more than the blessing might have. Mortal souls start to degrade when they no longer have a body to inhabit or a mind to function. This is the reason that nobody is born with their past life’s memories; it’s all stripped away when they die. Most souls, once they’re reincarnated, will only have their moral compass and basic traits left in them. Of course, I have no idea if this will ever apply to you with your pseudo-god power but it pays to be careful.

Anna took a moment to ponder the strangely comfortable feeling she had without a body. ‘I think I might be immune based on the fact that I didn’t even notice I didn’t have a body when I woke up, I didn’t feel any pain or anything. But would you even feel pain if you didn’t have a body? Was I slowly being... digested by the abyss?’ she shivered at the idea. Waving away that terrifying theory she went back to reading.

Now the main reason I’ve written and left this message for you is to explain some things I didn’t get a chance to after the blessing. I was planning to, but your reaction was much more violent than I was expecting it to be and it knocked you unconscious. It’s very hard to have a discussion with an unconscious person.

First things first I want to lay down some ground rules on what not to do.

First rule, Keep the humans alive. (fairly obvious.)

Second rule, Don’t artificially create a world government.

Now the first rule should be fairly obvious. The whole point of this was to have a successor that could keep humanity from dying.

The second rule I believe we discussed some but I just want to reiterate. Do not, under any circumstances, try to create an artificial world government. I don’t know how, I don’t know why, but any time I’ve tried this it has always failed. Could you perhaps get it to work where I couldn’t, maybe. However, I doubt it.

Clarification, world council’s are fine but world governments are not. Again I have no idea why, but anytime I’ve tried it's always gone down in a ball of flames.

Nuclear flames.

Second thing, I want to caution you against doing some things. Because of your pseudo-godlike nature, these things may not actually harm you, but I want you to be careful of them.

As I mentioned in the beginning of this message, always use a body and have a sanctuary when in the abyss. This is to prevent soul degradation and all of its nasty side effects. The body will protect the soul while the sanctuary will provide a safe place for the body.

Don’t mess with souls, please. Souls are the spirits of Sapient beings. Spirits are... well… I don’t know how to describe them in a way for you to understand. They're sort of like a beings ‘consciousness,’ but there's more to it than that. I honestly can’t describe it better than that.

Anyways, don’t mess with them. Spirits contain all of the potential of that being's life and of all of the lives that they will live. That's a lot of potential. And messing with spirits tends to make all of that potential come out at once… explosively. However, sapient beings have WAY more potential than any animal could possibly have. It's like comparing a nuclear blast to a supernova.

So, don’t mess with souls.

Anna shivered when she read that. ‘Yeah, I’m gonna stay far away from that line of research.’ She decided before returning to reading.

Also, just to inform you, YOU ARE NOT INVULNERABLE!

Anna almost dropped the paper in fright when God's pleasant-sounding voice resounding in her head suddenly turned… demonic, for the lack of a better word. She definitely flinched though and just about fell off the rock that she was making a seat out of. Warily, she opened the letter again once her headache dissipated.

You are just very-very-very-very-very-very-VERY hard to kill. Like I said before. It would probably take you willingly diving into the sun to kill you, but you can be killed.

Now, this letter is already getting longer than I had wished but there are a few things I would like to explain.

Probably the first thing I should explain is that being a god really revolves around intent. Do you intend to do that? Is that the intended purpose for what you created? Etc. My point is that as long as you have an idea, and the intent behind that idea, you can create it using the potential in the abyss.

Potential is also an important factor to being a god, so I guess I’ll explain that next. Potential is the basis of the universe. All matter, all energy, all mana, and all particles will, eventually, boil down to potential. A great thing about potential is that sapient beings create a whole lot of it. Almost an infinite amount really. We gods use this potential to guide and create sapient races. Then, the excess energy leftover from after an ascension is siphoned away to be used kinda like how you use electricity.

I guess that takes us to your overall goal in the grand scheme of things. Your goal, as the new shepherd of humanity, is to get humans to the point where they can achieve a thing called ascension. What an ascension is is when a sapient race has expanded beyond the confines of their plane of reality. When this happens, and it will happen, it's inevitable, that race will ascend to the higher planes. Where the gods currently are. They will become one of the Ascended and then they will go on to create more Ascended.

However, this process will take millions, if not billions, of years. So you have plenty of time.

Finally, some words of encouragement.

You are going to make mistakes Anna. I have no doubts about that. The important thing to remember is that, while you may make mistakes, you can always fix them. Hell, that's all I've been doing for the past billion years. Watching you all kill yourselves, disparaging your stupidity, then starting over again with more knowledge.

So, go, make mistakes. Enjoy yourself. See the horrors and pleasures that humanity has to offer. Do what you wish, I have faith in you, Anna.

And, if all else fails, you can always just rewind time.

Sincerely, God.

Anna leaned back on her rock and stared up at Earth floating overhead. She contemplated a lot of things. Sort of like how she had in that car ride before. She thought about the current state of the world, debated with herself about the best way to fix it, and managed to give herself a huge migraine.

She sighed. ‘He has faith in me, huh?’

She then shot up and turned back to the letter when she realized what he wrote. “I CAN REWIND TIME?!”