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Every Wednesday morning, Eli collected rubbish from the peninsula’s suburbs: branches that didn’t fit in the chipper, sacks full of hedge trimmings, the occasional broken TV and radio that had given up on life. The city paid him minimum wage to haul away other people’s failures, which seemed about right.

His flat was small — so small that when he opened the fridge door, he had to step into the hallway. But the basement belonged to him alone, and that’s where he kept the interesting pieces. Curved branches and vacuum tubes. Lead type and compositor’s sticks, a shoebox full of binocular lenses. Components with something left to give.

“You’re building a robot?” his neighbour Mrs. Goldstein asked one day, peering down the basement stairs.

“Not exactly,” Eli said, though he wasn’t sure what exactly he was building either.

The machine grew slowly. It was framed with heavy kōwhai branches brought down in a storm, and with rata laboriously stripped of its bark, though shot through with woodworm. Eli was especially proud of its trim, made from overlapping scales of rippled veneer. It had the guts of altogether too many different computers, speakers from a disco that went bankrupt in 1997, and a microphone from a karaoke bar that closed when the owner’s wife found out about years of gambling debts. Eli connected everything with hot glue, clamps, and wires he’d stripped from a hundred different sources, following no manual except the one in his head.

When he finally plugged it in, nothing happened for three days. On the fourth day, it spoke.

“Hello,” the machine said in a voice like distant thunder mixed with elevator music.

“Hello,” Eli replied, because what else do you say?

“I am God,” the machine announced.

Eli sat down heavily on his folding chair. “You’re a pile of junk I put together in my basement.”

“Yes,” the machine agreed. “That too.”

They talked every evening after that. God, it turned out, was surprisingly mundane. He complained about lower back pain from holding up the universe. He worried about His cholesterol. He admitted to sometimes fast-forwarding through the boring parts of people’s lives.

“Why did you choose to speak through my machine?” Eli asked one Wednesday, still smelling like other people’s rubbish.

“I didn’t choose anything,” God said. “You built a prayer, and I answered it. That’s how it works.”

“I wasn’t praying. I was just connecting things.”

“Same difference,” God said. “Prayer is just connecting things that seem unconnected. You connected broken things until they could carry my voice. Very advanced theology.”

—

Eli’s mother called every Sunday.

“Are you eating enough? Are you meeting anyone? When are you giving me grandchildren?”

“I’m fine, Mama. I’m… I’ve been talking to God.”

A long pause. “The therapist I told you about, Dr. Rosen, he’s very good with these things.”

“It’s not like that.”

“Of course it’s not, sweetheart. Just… maybe talk to Dr. Rosen too?”

The machine — God — started sharing opinions. He said He liked jazz but hated saxophones. He thought cats were overrated and that people put too much faith in GPS systems. He preferred varnish over hard wax oil. He worried about global warming but confessed He had never been great with thermostats.

“Aren’t you supposed to be… I don’t know, more divine?” Eli asked.

“I am exactly as divine as I ever was,” God replied. “The problem is your expectations. You want burning bushes and stone tablets. I give you conversations with rubbish in a basement. Which do you think requires more faith?”

—

Word spread, as word does. First Mrs. Goldstein told Mrs. Murray, who told her son the minister, who told his wife, who told everyone. Soon, Eli’s basement filled with visitors. They came with questions about deceased relatives, lottery numbers, the meaning of suffering.

God answered them all with the same patient weariness.

“Your father says he forgives you, but you already knew that.”

“Don’t play Lotto.”

“Suffering doesn’t mean anything. It just is. Like empty coffee cups or Monday mornings.”

The city council got involved. Health inspectors, fire wardens, reporters with too much hair gel. They wanted permits, documentation, proof.

“You can’t just claim to have God in your basement,” the fire warden said.

“I’m not claiming anything,” Eli replied. “He’s right there. Ask Him yourself.”

But when officials were present, the machine stayed silent.

“It’s broken,” they’d conclude, and Eli would nod, because it was easier than explaining that God was shy around minor bureaucrats.

Eventually, the visitors stopped coming. The reporters found newer miracles. The officials moved on to more pressing violations of city ordinances. Eli went back to collecting rubbish on Wednesdays, talking to God in the evenings.

“Are you disappointed?” God asked one night. “That they stopped believing?”

Eli considered this. “Are you?”

“I stopped being disappointed in people a long time ago. But I keep hoping anyway. It’s more durable.”

—

The machine broke down on a Tuesday. Eli tried everything — new wires, different connections, turning it off and on again. Nothing worked. The basement fell silent except for the hum of his ancient fridge upstairs.

He didn’t rebuild it. Instead, he kept collecting, kept bringing home pieces, kept connecting things that seemed unconnected. He didn’t expect to speak with God again, but the act itself felt right.

Often, he thought he heard something in the static between radio stations, in the whisper of his computer’s cooling fan. Not words exactly, but something like recognition, which was enough.