by Davi Cao
“That’s a nice offer, it sure is. But I don’t want to make my future. I want to live the life I used to have, out of control, responsible for nothing besides my own way. For that I need to find Mae and get Terra back. So, we need to destroy this world and make it easier for me to find her.”
“I can help you in that too. If you want it, please, I can help.” Dalana pushed the cart with eyes intent on the next entrance.
She stopped under the arch to another long corridor, nodding, immersed in thoughts. By the World Voice’s thundering impact in his mind, Colin trembled with fear. Darkness swallowed the floor’s end, the walls shook, suffering from an endless earthquake, constantly spilling matter that fell down, which the resisting walls reabsorbed.
“The last time, I made the cart reach the end by itself. I never entered there.” Dalana tried to keep the objects in front of her from shaking too much.
“Stay here, don’t risk yourself. I can take these buckets and get the last batch you left there. That’s all there’s to do, right?”
“Yes,” Dalana said, unable to fix her gaze, taken by fear and sadness at the edge of the World Voice’s intensifying room.
∙ 8 ∙ Under the pillar
The final corridor reverberated the World Voice’s sadness, a long path walled with boom boxes. Thick air punched Colin at every violent wave, throwing him from one side to the other. He lost equilibrium, he had to balance on one foot and then step down with the other, hitting the wall and losing the notion of his surroundings.
“Kill me ... somebody, destroy me ... I am so alone ... I don’t want to live ...”
The cart melted down with the buckets, scattering the resisting objects on the floor. A couple of them melted, too weak to resist the world’s only power intensified. To get it all back, he wished for thick iron spheres that would engulf the sorted materials and roll on until the dark end.
The corridor ended in mud. Not finding any other room or any hint at older resisting objects, he turned his head back and shouted at Dalana. The World Voice spoke so loudly in his mind, though, that he wouldn’t even hear her, in case she managed to reply.
“I’m drowning in tears ... I am the worst being ever to exist ... Everybody hates me ...”
He walked on intensified land, feeling the fur on his arms shiver, his heart pound faster, the certainty of life’s phases give way to doubts and regrets. The trembling floor stayed behind, releasing him on unprotected terrain.
Colin found only mud because the room had crumbled. Colin imagined a clearing, a tiny black hole capable of sucking the ground ahead of him. But before he materialized it, he gave up, panting with fear. If he had done so, he would’ve lost any resisting stuff from the last expedition.
He remembered the time when he played one of OOOO’s games, when it put him in a cave and had only an eating thing at his hands. An inspiring tool. He crafted a transparent mechanical eating worm and recreated it as many times as needed until he found a big cave.
He rolled the iron spheres containing the research material and found small mounds of melted stuff in the room. If a cart had taken them there, it had disappeared long ago, leaving only a few pieces of solid matter. He rubbed the ground with his bare hands to collect little stones of bright colors, some still intact artifacts, such as headphones and cooking pans. One piece of cake looked attractive even after the end of the world, a red strawberry on top, milky filling, and chocolate mass, and it melted down only when Colin tried to pick it up.
“I don’t ask for forgiveness ... I never did anything good or bad ... So alone in here, and never had the chance to make mistakes ... That’s because I am a mistake ... The biggest mistake ...”
He collected everything in the room, filling his arms and hands with all the resisting things he managed to find. The World Voice pounded, it struck him with sadness.
“All is lost ... I don’t have hopes ... I am alone ... I’ll never have the friends I want so much ...”
The iron spheres collapsed on themselves, flowing over their contents like drops of liquid plastic. Their research objects greeted the chamber of intensified Voice with more melt downs.
Colin’s heart ached, making him pant even though he needed no more air. Staying there sickened him, and he shuddered just thinking how it would feel if the great pillar passed above the base at that moment. If the amplification displayed so much power with the faint effects of the World Voice, with its full presence it would turn his body into soup, no matter how safe he felt with his concepts of life.
He struggled against himself, shaking his head, keeping his pile of research materials in place. Fleeing the intensifier area, close to the strong walls of Dalana’s holy corridor, Colin took a false step and tumbled on the floor, scattering everything over the agitated ground.
“My life is hell ... I live to suffer ... Why ... Why can’t I put an end to myself?”
Dalana waited for him at the end and saw him falling down. She ran to him, she helped him up. Both collected the fallen objects, kneeling to avoid losing control once again.
Moving away from the intensifier, Dalana rolled her body on Colin’s, spinning around herself on his back, showing him the way of her people in dealing with sadness. Her thick dress and the rubbing of her nose on his neck made him tickle. Colin laughed by instinct, trying to get away from Dalana’s massage, scared at that intimacy.
“You’re good, you’re a nice person, you deserve to create, to shape things and live them, you are not alone and we all suffer like you, so we must unite and make strong bonds together, we must talk and—” she said, pulling his arm to make him walk quicker.
“Ok, I know it, I know, ok? I’m fine now, thank you. What’s that thing you were doing at my back? That was funny,” he said, carrying a small pile of objects and smiling at Dalana.
On their way back to the lab, Dalana took a quick glance at Colin’s rescued materials, grabbing a box of them to help. She probed his expression, alert to quicker than usual blinks or nose wrinkling, lazy eyes, or twitching lips. He survived the intensifier.
“You have friends in here, a community of your own, and we’re going to make Utopia, no matter how far we are from having a different world,” she said.
“Ok, I know, I know.” Colin rolled his eyes, bored of hearing the same assurance over and over again.
“And we can have anything we want, anything! As soon as we find ways of shielding our creations from the World Voice’s faint power, we’ll be great, no need to destroy anything anymore.”
“Listen, wait, hold on there. I can deal with the Voice, I told you so. But you flee from it, and you’re trying to comfort me. Shouldn’t that be the other way around?”
“Good. Comfort me then.” She challenged him, touching her chin on his shoulder.
“You have no reason to be sad.”
“That’s it?”
“Do you need more? You believe in perfect worlds, and you have hope of having one of them in this hellhole. Besides, you have friends and all that.” Colin spoke with confidence over firm steps. “Two things that make us sad: fear of the future and our relationship with people. You’re good on both fronts.”
“Then why does the Voice affect me so much?” Dalana spoke in a low voice, looking down, raising one eyebrow.
He swung his head in an effort to provide the correct answer. He muttered words he himself couldn’t understand, “It numbs us ...” Then voices spoke in his place, coming from the depths beyond the corridor. People fought in the lab, screaming. Dalana and Colin increased their pace, staring at each other in disbelief. They had left fragile humans alone with two opposing Creators.
“—and these skinny legs of yours, huh? Coming from a caricature of a human face, one part not matching the other, ugly all around. You’re ugly, so, so repulsive and nasty,” Ai.iA shouted, running around the table to get OOOO.
“Yes, I am ugly, am I not?” OOOO said, hopping among the scared humans to get rid of Ai.iA’s rage.
“I
don’t mean ugly in simple terms, no, don’t think so, what I mean is the ugliness that makes me want to laugh and despise you, to consider you inferior to all, a living joke!”
“It was ... It was my Creator’s fault ... Wasn’t it? I am a joke, yes, he wanted to create a joke world, and so he made me and the rest.”
“See, nobody should take you seriously, you don’t deserve the same as we do, you can’t be respected like we are, you—”
Colin opened the door and found the room in chaos. OOOO jumped high to reach him, doing its best to fit in, rubbing its head on his arms, recoiling its legs to feel protected. Everything stopped moving, caught in the middle of a shameful act. Humans flocked to Dalana, also looking for her defensive powers, leaving Ai.iA alone in the middle of the table.
“You’re desperate, Ai.iA. Don’t do that to OOOO. It’s not its fault that you can’t have your world now. It was its turn to have it,” Dalana said.
“But it must leave it! It’s a terrible place, an ugly—”
“Yes, I know. And it will probably think the same of yours too. That’s not reason to make it want to give up on existence. We’ll get a world of your own by ourselves. Here, we brought some resisting stuff.”
Dalana and Colin placed the collected objects on a cleaned portion of the table, spreading them out freely, not minding the existing categories. They came in diverse colors, consistency and apparent functionality, they needed someone to form the first theories with them.
Oliver grabbed each and every one to feel their weight and compare it to what they would feel like on Terra. He pursed his lips, lifting those pieces with an effort.
“Now what? Where do we go from here?” Ai.iA said, hopping in front of Amanda.
“To the pillar ... I guess? We need only the real solid stuff.” Oliver used his fingers to open some space in the objects’ pile.
“See if the pillar has any effect on it. If they melt down under the apex, they’re not fit for us. If they resist, we have winners,” Amanda said, turning her head around, glancing at every person in the room.
“I’ll get some of these and take them under the Voice.” Colin pushed OOOO to the side. “This way we can be sure they’re the good stuff.”
“Wait, isn’t it dangerous? You just came back from the intensifier. Getting under the pillar can melt you down too,” Amanda said.
“Not me. I can deal with the World Voice,” Colin said.
Dalana shook her head, snapping her mouth shut, mimicking Terran people’s way of demonstrating their disapproval. She stepped closer to him, passing by the other humans to stand in front of Colin and keep shaking her head in front of him. Dark scared eyes swung left and right from his vision, a mouth, black as pitch, made a beak and said “no, no, no,” worried that he had had too much exposure to the World Voice’s intense power already, and that more could be dangerous.
Crafting backpacks, boxes, magnetic containers, joyful holders, or plank nets produced inefficient results in that world. Only a Creator’s conscience showed resilience enough to hold anything, and even it existed at peril. All the rest depended on energetic bonds, all easily taken down by a depression that didn’t distinguish sentient being from non-sentient ones.
If Colin had to carry testing material to the pillar, he’d have to do it on his arms, the same way he did in the intensifying chamber, unless he crafted new backpacks at every five seconds.
He piled the objects, putting headphone, notebook, microphone, bread, and plastic jewelry pieces in a pan, adding other bits of indescribable nature. Ai.iA threw everything in the pan to help sending him to the upper world, pushing Dalana away so that she stopped nagging him about her fears.
“I’ll be fine, I told you already. I’ve been under the pillar many times, and I’m still here, right?” He tried to soothe her, letting Ai.iA pile everything she could find on his arms.
“What if something changes? We change all the time, you must know that. The World Voice is always dangerous.” She swung her spine in a slow pendulum rhythm.
“Then watch me go, and if something bad happens, help me.” He looked straight into her eyes.
Watching the Creators go, the humans embraced themselves, weakened and diminished, shadowed by the shelter’s door. Although they resisted and endured harshness for the sake of survival, they depended on their angels to breathe. The Creators renewed the human’s air and water supply, opening the tunnel’s door without a goodbye, sure to return soon from the house’s backyard. The humans went to their rooms and slept.
Upstairs, something locked down the passage to the outside world. The obelisk had melted down and covered the door's area with its melted matter. Dalana wished for its reconstruction, and so she opened up their way.
The great pillar of glowing blue light shone in the horizon, distant and frightening. They heard a wind of eternal lament, of loneliness and misery, draining any sample of joy still left in their minds. OOOO, Dalana, Colin and Ai.iA left their protective shelter, and the World Voice feasted on them.
“Will you wait for it to come around?” Dalana said.
“I’ll create something to take me faster. Then I’ll try to intercept it with luck,” Colin said.
“I can help with a walking surface, can’t I?” OOOO hopped in front of everybody, materializing one of its contraptions in an empty space ahead.
“We’ll go with you and get as close as we can. I want to see it,” Ai.iA said.
“That’s fine.” Colin stepped towards OOOO’s creation. “How do we get on this thing?”
Their vehicle floated in the air on the condition that it didn’t touch the ground. If it did, it would be tortured even after death, and the sadness haunting it in that world would seem like tickles to it compared to what it would feel if it touched the ground and died. It was a big collection of drumlike shapes squeezing against each other, each drum-cell wide enough to fit a human on it. Dalana created a ramp coming out from the holy house’s sacred walls, leading them to the vehicle’s top.
Once boarded, OOOO banged the backside drum, indicating danger at that part, making them all flee in the opposite way. At high speed, the Creators flew towards the great pillar, drumming in different sides to change course as needed. They caught a good line that coincided with the Voice’s own path, closing in with it quickly.
Ai.iA’s heads ached with the proximity, saddening it above the recommended level. She lost the energy to hop with her underside rod, laying down on Dalana’s lap, a dejected child running for her mother. OOOO banged the drums to make it stop, perforating the already melting vehicle with one of its legs. They reached a dangerous distance.
“Get away while I get there. Meet me in this place when I’m done.” Colin jumped from the hovercraft.
“Please take care. And remember that you are loved.” Dalana stood at the edge to watch him go.
The column of glowing light grew wider and wider under Colin’s gaze. It wandered in a straight line towards him, bringing him the luck he wished for. Alone, left to test the pile of resisting materials on his arms, melted matter flowed on his chest, dripping on his legs. Things felt the same pressure that he did, the Voice that never shut up.
“I am so alone ... I never do anything right ... Nobody wants me because I’m terrible ... A disaster, I can’t make good impressions ...”
He stood at peace. Closed eyes, a slight smile on his face, letting terrible thoughts invade his mind and then leave, the feeling of watching loud trucks pass by a highway. The objects bubbled under the pillar, taken by blinding bluish white. They didn’t disintegrate whole, however. Only their outer layers turned into dejected matter, the Voice peeling them one by one, exposing shiny cores of blacks and yellows that kept no resemblance from their original sources. Strawberry cake turned into a green pebble, cooking pan into a red shard. On Colin’s skin, these objects seemed to become more, and not less, solid at every second.
From the myriad of objects Colin carried on his laps, only four survived. Their
pile transformed itself into a thick soup of sad matter, falling down with four meatballs in their midst. He collected them and waited for any further dissolution.
Under the pillar, nothing seemed capable of surviving forever, not even the ground itself. It swallowed Colin’s legs and waist, forcing him to swim out of it and create rising platforms to rescue him from its depths.
The four pieces resisted, two in each hand. Marveled at their rough beauty, the beauty of resistance, he caressed them in small waves of pleasure. Ready to walk home, hearing the flowing misery enter and leave his mind, he picked two stones with his fingers, keeping the other two under his palm.
Remembering his time at the laboratory, when they had created flashes of light, he struck them together. The stones attracted each other and them repelled their contact, causing a minor colored explosion, a minor red flash that died in a sound, a tired moan.
Then, silence. Absolute silence.
Under the purple sky, the World Voice’s pillar stopped its wanderings, for the first time since its inception. Locked in place in the horizon, it didn’t complain. Colin’s mind emptied from pain, he smiled.
He held both stones with reverence, raising his hands to watch them closer, to look for their hidden powers. The void was bliss, the lack of misery relieved his heart and made existence all the more pleasant. But the Voice returned.
“You are here ... I am here too ... Come to me ... Oh, no, don’t come to me ... I am the worst, the most pitiful ... You won’t ever love me ... Will you? Will you come to me ...? Please ...”
Colin shivered, shaking his knees. Something called him, the Voice, it felt him. The ground became firmer, swallowing him with less hunger under the pillar, allowing his feet to stay afloat. The words that invaded his thoughts spoke not of outright dejection. They changed, they had noticed a new presence, they announced new times. Something had been heard, the Voice said, something new, and yet—
