by Davi Cao
“Now pray in your chairs. Zach, sing something for us. Let us all listen.” Colin closed his eyes with a deep breath.
“My songs need a beautiful world.” Zach rubbed his chin.
“Amen, they’ll help making this world beautiful, trust yourselves.”
Through the entrance, Ai.iA shouted at OOOO, her loud voice attacking the Creator who answered with submission. And yet, the submissive one held the fate of their lives in its grip. Stones fell down a hill, torn apart and rolling in thunderous bangs, their voices echoing on the corridor, entering the church.
“Your time is over, no more arguments, I’m sick and tired of your bluster. Follow me, Dalana, we’ll meet Colin and get going,” Ai.iA said.
“No, don’t go, none of you, please, don’t! I can’t give an answer, can I? No, I can’t,” OOOO said.
“Yes, you can. If you do nothing, everybody will know your answer.”
Colin set Zach singing, turning his attention to the heated discussion outside. Dalana arrived at the door.
“What do we do about them?” she said, pointing her head at the humans on the chairs.
“I was going to ask you the same thing. They won’t die if we leave them alone, will they?” Colin said, in whispers, getting to her side.
“We’re playing a safe game. OOOO won’t let us disappear, so we’ll be back to take care of them. But if we have to go outside—” she said, interrupted by OOOO’s loud voice yelling at Ai.iA.
“I ask for a consultation! That’s valid, isn’t it?” OOOO said, interrupting Ai.iA’s hops. “I demand to speak with others out there to evaluate your request. Then I’ll give you my answer, you see?”
Many Creator’s cultures worked with advice from third parties. Beings immune to the constraints of time, beings who appreciated sharing their stories and discovering new insights loved to resort to such resources.
Ai.iA faced OOOO’s first admission of defeat with a perfect float, her rod punching the floor at a linear pace. If OOOO found other Creators and told them about their affair, it could come back with the decision to finally end its world. And she would be the victor, the new dominant one, because she came up with the idea to challenge it thus.
“I grant you that, in respect for our customs,” Ai.iA said.
“When I find others, I’ll share your threat. They’ll tell me what to do, won’t they?” OOOO said.
“Yes, and then you’ll return. We’ll wait for you here.”
“That’s good, you’ll be patient, won’t you?”
“If you don’t come back quickly enough, we’ll look for you up there. And the World Voice might get us,” Ai.iA said.
OOOO’s head spun once, pointing towards the lab at the end of the corridor. It covered the distance with the mission in its head, munching all the trouble still shadowing its future. OOOO never gave up, but it also never lost friends.
When crafting its idea for the World Voice’s dominion, it embedded one and only one way of ever making it disappear. If the council of outsiders recommended an end to its world, tragedy would fall upon him.
It had been long since OOOO remained underground. A mere peek on the surface when Oliver and Angeline died, and nothing else. The wide expanses of melted land, made from ruins now rare, gray mud under a purple sky, mounds of all sizes from the foreground to the infinite horizon, liquid mingling with solid, gas turned to slimy dust, that scenery of depression and disgust morphed into a new scenery that surprised OOOO.
The World Voice knew of a new presence somewhere, and its depression took on an unending search. The ground looked for novel matter, practicing its embrace on itself, and so the land rippled and small waves broke mud on mud, splattering nothing because every molecule looked for companionship, and once attached to something, it never abandoned it.
OOOO’s legs, one such presence, fell prey to the ground, which coveted it, offering it a hug which soon became a big mouth with a sticky tongue. It alternated its legs on the ground, never keeping them all down at once, using the free ones to release itself from the mud’s hold. It hopped high, punching the ground to move fast, crossing large swathes of slime undisturbed.
The great pillar of glowing light shone ahead, but throughout the horizon, a dozen or so other columns sought the sky, melted and blended matter growing tall, reaching mountain’s height, double that, triple that, taller than any structure in Terra’s old Solar System.
They rose at considerable speed, crumbling on themselves when their structure failed to handle their weight. Two had broken tips, the others moved slowly up, looking for a new presence in the purple vacuum, hoping to find in that direction what the rest of matter couldn’t find down in the planet.
With the same intensity that matter searched the sky, large sinkholes came close to dragging OOOO to the planet’s depths. The slime sought the new presence down where the rest of its parts didn’t go, scarring the continent’s surface with an extreme relief made of pimples and pores. It lived, it breathed, lacking organic compounds, dynamic, it was the World Voice incarnate, the physical portrait of its omnipresence.
To find others in that wasteland, to keep a reference to the lab, OOOO swept the horizon with its spinning head, intent on unusual formations in sight. It wandered a while until a flying object zipped over it in a straight line. The thing left a bluish and delicate trail, ornate with countless thin lines forming crosses behind its path. Hopping fast, OOOO followed it.
Whatever flew in the sky’s vacuum hit the end of its arch behind a mound still many jumps away from OOOO. Its surroundings showed a peace the rest of the world lacked more and more, the nearest heavenly columns and hellish sinkholes showing their might in the distant horizon. OOOO advanced in quick strides, noticing a few dots of colored beings.
Behind the hill, a group of Creators struggled to keep their balance while the earth did its best to swallow each and every one of them. In their midst, a mist of parallel lines with a trail of crosses fought against a finger protruding from the ground, disappearing inside the mud, and reappearing in a few moments, freed from it. A giant lizard with six legs rolled and spun on itself to escape the gripping ground, and a set of four ornate columns with flexible membranes spread between them twisted itself whenever new tides came to sweep it.
They tried to save themselves before OOOO arrived. One of them marked the area around them with dark crosses which propelled up the parts of matter that got stuck to it. It cleaned the area of the hungry surface, sending up to the sky big chunks of mud while leaving the Creators themselves intact.
It failed, though, to keep the world slime away from the new presences, as it kept coming back for more, not satisfied until it could find the ones who announced themselves with so much mystery.
After much squirming, one tall wave found its way towards them and engulfed their bodies. They entered the planet’s stomach, losing themselves in the words of longing that bashed their minds. The surface became gray and desert, a graveyard of fallen Creators. OOOO, still impressed by Ai.iA’s suicide threat, felt the pain of guilt strike it again.
It imagined a rescue attempt, but they emerged over of a giant column sprouting from the slime, square-shaped on the top with a slow transition to roundness on its shaft. It had countless spikes on the top, which the Creators used to hold themselves while it tore and shredded the mud with its ascension. Soon enough, the new base they stood on sought the world around it, a new presence, decomposing itself to join the company of whatever shared its contact.
OOOO, sensing trouble, needing to talk to them, created a huge three-legged waterfall with a solid-mist plateau on its top. The waterfall’s legs flowed down in high-speed, ejected from infinite emitters, pushing the plateau up, and meeting the new presence as fast as new muscles and bones came to into being.
The solid-mist that held the Creators consisted of a matter of uncertainty, willing to find a new presence, yet also doubtful of its own existence, therefore unable to act. OOOO reached the others over the sol
id-mist with a big jump, smiling at them before introducing itself.
“You’re having fun, aren’t you?” it said.
“Well, well, look at what we have here,” the lizard one said. “OOOO, my old fellow, what a pleasure to finally meet you again.”
“Did you miss me?”
“Yes, yes, very much so. I wondered how you’d fare in this desolate world.”
“It’s my world, isn’t it? Were you in danger when I got here?”
“Good danger, the thrilling kind,” the cloud of black crosses said. “We’re surfing the mud.”
“We need a group to do this, otherwise we can get injured for real,” the four columns Creator said.
“It’s a good idea, it is, it is,” the lizard said. “We’re having a good time.”
“It’s nice to hear it, isn’t it? Because others are having problems, aren’t they? I need counseling.”
“Do you want us to hear your case? We are available,” the columns said.
“Yes, please. People are waiting for my answer ... Aren’t they?” OOOO said.
The three-legged waterfall resisted well to the world’s hostility, despite the great pillar of glowing light sweeping the distant horizon. The World Voice had the effect of a time constraint on those Creators’ minds, something that put them at peril along with the rest of creation. As beings of infinite patience, though, those Creators could talk or play games forever with calmness.
“My friends will let themselves die if I don’t give up on my world, won’t they? They threatened me, after trying to destroy my creation with their own inventions. Things are not melting anymore because of them, you see?” OOOO said.
“Did they cause the bangs?” the six-legged lizard asked.
“Yes, they were the ones. And I helped them, didn’t I?” OOOO gave them a silly boy grin. “The one called Ai.iA, do you know her?” They shook their heads, saying “Ai.iA, Ai.iA, Ai.iA,” out loud to test her name’s sound. “She wants to be the dominant one in my place. If I give up, the new world will be hers, won’t it? Because she’s behind the attempts to overthrow me, you see? She thought of a way of beating me, and that is threatening me to let the World Voice kill her if I don’t give up.”
“Winning against the dominant one is always hard,” the cloud of crosses said.
“You were clever against Mae, but few are. I understand Ai.iA,” the columns said.
“Then what should I do? I like my world! I like the World Voice and want to live through it longer,” OOOO said.
“The World Voice is interesting. I understand it too,” the columns said.
“Yes, yes, I like it too,” the lizard said.
“On the other side, I don’t want to lose Ai.iA ...” OOOO said.
“Me neither,” the lizard said.
“And she’s not alone. My friends joined her. They will die too, won’t they?” OOOO spun its head.
“Creators must always exist,” the cloud of crosses said. “They must find their way among us. We must save them.”
“I know, don’t I? Should I give up on my world, then?”
“No, no, it’s not fair, not fair,” the lizard Creator said.
“What is the verdict? I need the council’s deliberation, don’t I?”
The Creators exchanged a quick murmur packed with dense information. OOOO waited. They spoke more, fast, between them and only them, using the restricted band for council agreements. The World Voice’s pillar approached, forcing OOOO to change the three-legged waterfall to allow it to move on land, taking it above hill and downwards, fleeing from the glowing light’s projected path.
“You must give up on your world. We can’t risk losing one Creator. Losing one is tragedy, more than one is shame on all. You’ll want to die too after it happens. We’ll lose one more. Others will be sad. They will die too. It can’t happen. You must give up on your world,” the cloud of crosses said.
“Think, think, you shouldn’t give up. You did nothing wrong, you only created a new world, an interesting one, one that we enjoy living, we do enjoy it. This Ai.iA won’t allow her own death, much less the other Creators. Two or three Creators dying at the same time, that’s unthinkable, it will never happen and cannot happen. So, it won’t happen, we must admit that. She’s playing with you, trying to beat you. If she succeeds, she’s smart. But you’re smart too, OOOO. Let her have her way, let’s see how far she goes. Let her go to the edge and, if she’s really serious about it, only then you do something,” the lizard said.
“You should give up, and also not give up. You are not wrong to have your way, but if it affects you to lose others, you should consider not losing them. You’ll lose something, there’s no way out. What hurts you less?” the columns said.
Two opposite votes, and one opposed to itself. The council deliberated, and for Creators, a stalemate spiced the game. Immortals cared little about winning, seduced by novelty and surprise more than anything.
“I won’t give up on my world then,” OOOO said, getting ready to leave the solid-mist on which it stepped. “They won’t let themselves die for real, will they? They’re just playing with me, aren’t they? Why would Creators choose to die?”
∙ 20 ∙ Dalana, the preacher
The door to the upper world had to remain a door, otherwise how would OOOO get back? It caused too much trouble, though, as Amanda dodged the obstacles created ahead of her in the corridor, chairs and folded sheets, soft things to make her trip and fall, so that Colin and Dalana could get to her and hold her back.
She screamed at them with so much rage that the scare of her disheveled blond hair pushed them away and allowed her to keep running, racing towards the big round table, to the room where the door would take her to the upper world, to meet the World Voice, the one who begged for the new presence, the one who would only stop torturing everything else when it found out that it wasn’t alone.
Too unfit for much exercise, overweight and fragile at the knees, Amanda slowed down a few steps from her target, faltering enough to let Colin grab her by the arm and put an end to her running.
His muscles could lose him a battle against her, were him a mortal human, but his immortality granted him infinite resilience, no matter how much she squirmed against his grip. At last, she gave up, still craving for a new presence for each of her cells.
“Why don’t you want me? What have I done to you ... Don’t leave me alone ... I want to be with you, whoever you are ... Come to me, please ...”
Amanda opened her arms wide under Colin’s gentle gripping. She changed her expression, from the wild beast of clenched teeth and raised lips to one of a tight frown and moist eyes. Confident of her attitude change, Colin shook his head to Dalana, who understood the sign and headed back to church, where the other humans waited alone, disregarded by Ai.iA, who didn’t care about their safety anymore.
Amanda embraced Colin, enveloping his torso with her arms and pressing her head on his chest. Her skin touched on his t-shirt with a soft warmth, the faint smell of sweat and perfume. She needed consolation, she needed the human touch after countless weeks under the dead world’s sky, he admitted she needed all that.
At the same time, she needed to let go of him, otherwise their skins would blend in each other and discover the new presences in their bodies’ bones. He kept Angeline in his mind, the one he desired to meet for real, the only one capable of satisfying his craving for a new presence, and he left her there, in the imaginary, so that he had nothing real to trick him into mingling his flesh with another being. He pushed Amanda back and guided her to church, where Dalana’s presence would help him deal with the community.
“—one thing that you did all the time in your world, no, it’s not praying, it’s different,” Dalana said when Colin entered the room. “You sit down, with your back straight, doing nothing, what’s the name of it? You know it, of course you do.”
“Meditation?” Colin said, leading Amanda to one of the resistant chairs, whispering in her ear when sh
e tried to touch Zach’s arm “Be nice and don’t touch anything. The world will be gone soon, and we’ll all have a new house.”
“Yes, meditation! Let’s do this, ok? Zach, Mat, Charlotte, come on, sit down on the floor, bend your knees, let your hands rest on your shins, close your eyes. Like this, see?” Dalana made herself the pose in front of Oliver’s empty chair.
“I refuse to do so. We meditate when we pray, that’s the right way to commune with our one true Creator. He’s watching us now, and he sure doesn’t think it’s time for betraying our word to his wisdom.” Laura crossed her arms.
“It’s just a way of sitting down, she’s not asking you to pray, for God’s sake.” Colin helped Dalana dealing with the rebel. “Sit down and close your eyes, then, you don’t have to do anything else. Stay put and don’t touch the others! We want to keep you safe for as long as we can.”
“Safe? Without my brothers and sisters? You speak of the devil’s work. Give me your hand, Amanda, Zach, get back to your chair, let’s pray together, hold my hand you too, and all of you, now.” Laura spread her fingers to invite their touch.
Colin and Dalana broke the chains of fingers one by one, advancing against the humans’ stubbornness that insisted in gripping their palms and mingling with their own kind. They tried to form a universal community of the sons and daughters of God, the one who spoke to them in clear Voice.
“I want to be your friend ... Show up, please ... Don’t leave me so alone in here ... It’s too miserable to me, I can’t take it anymore ... Save me from this void ... Where are you? Talk to me ...”
To which they answered in prayer, “We are here for you, o, father, hear us, save us from the void that separates us. We are ready to join your kingdom, we are your child, we are here for you.”
Dalana, not raised in Terra, existing long enough to see only two or three human worlds in which religion existed, heard their words of faith with attentive ears and hands ready to strike. For Colin, though, born a child of Terra, the words Laura prayed with the others indicated a danger Dalana couldn’t even glimpse, words of a cult willing to commit mass suicide.
