He followed His appearances on the pages of magazines, the television, the Internet. The team of scientists who had discovered Him were to be seen daily on the television news, giving interim reports of the endless list of astonishing properties that God was turning out to possess.
God became a major media star.
The words he sometimes managed to smuggle past the gates of the Internet were used as texts for new hit songs. Young girls wore the image of his blurred photograph on their tee-shirts.
God became a new sexual symbol.
Communication with him, however, continued to be generally difficult. Although the scientific team had managed to demonstrate God's presence with the help of all kinds of mysterious test-tubes and pipes, particle accelerators and laser microscopes, it proved far from easy, and above all extremely expensive, to photograph him. The photographs circulated by the press were twelve in number, and it had as yet proved impossible to obtain a thirteenth. While the team of NASA experts made intensive efforts to communicate with God, He made much more frequent, unexpected appearances on the screens of ordinary Internet users, or slipped like a small mouse into mobile phone displays, or the signal bands of walkie-talkies (which caused great confusion in the ranks of the police, who used walkie-talkies), and generally manifested himself in places that the experts entirely failed to predict. He showed himself to common people. The American government offered a lavish reward to anyone who could set up regular contact with Him. Playboy magazine offered an even higher reward to anyone who could manage to get an interview with Him. In the end it was possible to find quite a lot of the fragmentary kinds of interview. God actually provided information quite often, mainly via e-mail. In most cases, however, these were very short messages, and nobody could much understand them. And anyway, how could their authenticity be guaranteed? People often made things up and would supply the press with any kind of stuff.
For instance, the Allah followers came up with an interview in which God swears He doesn't exist. "I'm definitely sure I am not," He supposedly declared.
"There is only Allah and He is, Oh the Great One," He was supposed to add.

Well, Mashl was one of the lucky ones God visited from time to time. The communication was, however, rather one-sided. God sometimes sent short e-mails without a return address, and they failed to make much sense anyway. They gave the impression of someone just learning to type, with masses of typos and so forth. Some of the messages were written in a strange language that Mashl couldn't understand. Sometimes God made himself known by a mysterious hum in the telephone receiver, and at other times Mashl sensed his presence in the air, thanks to a strange urgency that suddenly seemed to invest all the objects around him, including - and especially - a weird configuration of clouds in the sky (always rain clouds). Mashl often tried to talk to him directly, holding up His photograph and trying to hypnotise himself with it. In the end he often fell asleep. Then it started to rain. When it rained he felt that God was closer than during sunny weather.
Sometimes he noticed that the old carpet rolled up in the corner of his room looked immensely friendly. When falling asleep he would notice a little dark bump peeping from behind the carpet, but coalescing into the heap of clothes, books and other junk that had been chucked on top of the carpet.
Drowsily, he always told himself that as soon as he got up he would go and find out what it was, since he was afraid it might be some kind of mildew. But when he woke up, the mildew had always vanished from his mind.
From time to time he tried to call Rosie to ask her how she was. But Rosie didn't pick up the phone. Once Rosie's mother answered the phone and told him irritably that Rosie had „gone crazy and joined some sect or other".
"D'you mean the Jehovah's Witnesses?" he had asked.
Her mother wasn't sure, Rosie didn't tell her much and only turned up at home when she needed money. Probably not Jehovah's Witnesses, but some kind of political party that fattens up its supporters to precisely defined sizes, and you get a position in the party corresponding to your size, or so Rosie had said. The fatter you are, the higher your position, and contrariwise, fat people who held no important position had to diet, so as not to steal the limelight from the really important party members. And what does Mashl say to that, then? Just think how it feels to get to her age only to see her only daughter take leave of her senses! At least she's not pregnant, or maybe she's taking drugs. That'll come next, no doubt.
Mr. Mashl thanked Mrs. Shetkova and hung up on her lamentations.
He wonders who to call next. Should he try his former girlfriend? Ever since she left him he has lived alone. It occurred to him, however, that she might not be best pleased to hear from him. Every time they've spoken she's been in a hurry, or so it has seemed to him. But perhaps he's just over-sensitive.
He picks up the receiver.
He hears the music of Prokofiev.