by Davi Cao
“I come from a world where being sad makes things tastier. I guess that’s why the flavor strikes me better, right?”
“Probably. I can’t feel anything yet.”
Colin stood up from the chair. The restaurant fascinated him with how its interior resisted the World Voice's depressing influence. The apocalypse came and took with it most traces of humanity, and yet places where they could pretend to eat and be like people from Earth endured all hardships. He went to the counter to admire all the small things he found there, just for admiration’s sake. The last moments of integrity in that old reality, for the Voice ruled the world and would never die.
“Everybody is gone ... You can’t do this to me, you have to talk to me ... Somebody show up, please ... I can’t stand this loneliness ...”
OOOO moved behind Colin, watching him touch the credit card machines, the wrapped candies, sweeping the melted stuff from the counter's surface. It smiled with head tilted sideways, whispering to itself:
“I fell on the right time, in the right place, didn't I? I'll see him bloom, discover his powers, his creativity. Lucky me, am I not?”
It then crawled to Colin's side, looking down where he played with Earth's relics.
“Why don’t you create something to cheer up this place, huh?” it said.
“No, I don’t create things. I refuse to do so, remember? I don't kill living creatures, unlike you,” he said.
“Yes, some Creators are like this, you see? It’s also interesting. But it’s nice to create things, isn’t it? Like that cat that you did!”
“That was painful to watch, and I never want to do it again. Didn’t you have pain in your world?”
“Maybe yes. We laughed at it, we laughed a lot, didn’t we? We died all the time, and it was funny, because then we could try another turn.”
Familiar words hid the true nature of OOOO's strangeness. Its otherworldly origin became evident only when the listener made the connections. Colin turned his back on it, weirdness creeping into his body. A seed germinated in his mind, sowed by the creature's suggestion. He thought about music, the soothing melody of his favorite singer for cold, dark days, and he wished that it played in the hall. As he wished, it happened, and his heart accelerated when he heard her voice’s tender words:
“Well met, well met and I know true love ...”
Air particles filled the room, racing past the windows as they bled to the vacuum outside. Then even the sound melted, fading in slow motion, unable to resist that world's hostility, air gone and liquefied in a dejected soup. Colin had another taste of his power and once again it proved worse than useless. It only increased his pain. OOOO hopped over the tables when the music sounded, excited.
“Do it again! Try something different to see if it can last longer. We can play a game called ‘Resistance’, can’t we? My turn!” it said.
It then proceeded to craft a blue cylinder with a body made of loosened strings. The creation jumped in the room without a target, hitting the ceiling and the ground when it bounced, getting fatter when flying, and straighter when in contact with the surface, in a pattern so unlike Terran physics that Colin couldn’t avoid admiring it. Its strings detached, though, and exploded like fuses, disappearing as if fried by boiling oil.
Having empathy for it, Colin suffered from the little creation’s pain. OOOO’s alien nature annoyed him, its insensibility pushed him away, making him willing to stand apart from it and be alone in the restaurant, in that little museum of his home world.
“Your turn now!” it said.
Colin went to the kitchen, ignoring OOOO’s expecting glance, to escape from it, and also to look for more of humanity’s legacy. Dark, illuminated by the entrance's dim light, the kitchen had two big ovens, countless pans, and many puddles of unknown matter. He opened all drawers and the doors of all cabinets, comforting himself with the view of familiar products and objects. Only a handful of things showed signs of melting.
In the wall, a big gray door, bulky like none other in the place, stood firm in place. Maybe the restaurant's cold room? If something had to resist the apocalypse, it would find certain refuge in there. OOOO entered the room to watch Colin’s survey, as curious as he was to see what lay behind the strong door.
He turned its handle with great strength and the door exploded. It threw itself opened, blowing Colin and OOOO back with violence, air leaking towards the vacuum. Their bodies flew through the kitchen colliding with cacophonous pans and utensils. Another body escaped the cold room with the rush of air. A man who soon found himself poisoned by the hostile world's matter, choking and bleeding with bursting rashes all over his skin. He moved his limbs frantically around, punching cabinet doors with arms and feet, banging his head on the floor as a way of easing his pain.
Colin ran to help the man, desperate to relieve him somehow, to have him alive. But he melted like Mr. Alden did in the office, losing his muscles and then his bones, turning into a puddle of disgusting flesh. OOOO went to his side.
“It’s always funny to watch things melt, isn’t it?” it said, with a big smile.
∙ 6 ∙ An immortal's burden
Colin clenched his hands. His nails pierced his palm, his skin impenetrable. He would never bleed again. The thought gave him strength, it gave him the courage to listen to the anger in his heart and strike at OOOO.
He jumped over the creature with the whole weight of his body, taking it down on the kitchen floor. It didn’t budge, falling like a dummy under Colin and looking at him with its goggled, curious eyes.
He punched OOOO’s gray face, hitting its temples with his fists. Rage flowed in his body's veins, furious to see that the creature didn’t even blink with the violence he used to attack its head. Underwhelmed, he made no distinction between targets, throwing his firm bones on its skull as much as on its pointy teeth.
His skin remained intact, free from pain, he who had never fought in his life, he who had never felt the impact of human flesh under his closed fists.
He grabbed one of OOOO’s legs, dragging it behind him. The creature’s body rolled lightly, easy to move around. Colin took it to the eating room, gripped its leg with both hands and threw it against the wall. It struck the tiles and fell again, laughing at the ride.
“That’s nice, very interesting! You enjoy this too, don’t you?” it said.
OOOO’s amusement offended Colin, who grabbed a chair by his side. He smashed the object on the creature’s body, hitting it hard until the chair fell apart. The wood broke, small pieces flew to the floor, all solid, all Earth-like. Colin went to the buffet table and took a couple of dishes, which he threw on OOOO. They exploded with the impact, emanating pleasure at the destruction.
As the creature didn’t react, watching the human relieve his anger on its intact body, Colin went on with his mad violence, forgetting little by little the pain of the melted man who had been still alive inside the cold room. He took a fork and tried to hurt OOOO, pressing it hard against its skin, but it was so docile and interested in his attempts that it made little sense to continue with the play.
The fork scraped the creature’s delicate skin, like a finger caressing an orange, and Colin made sense of his efforts. Nothing in there would hurt it. He had watched his world melt and he couldn't force its reaper to pay for its terrible sin. He wanted to make it feel pain, and so he punched it again, on its head, on the fluffy tissues under its neck. He tried to bend its legs, he tried to dismember it, to amputate it with a table.
He wanted a bomb, a grenade to blow it into pieces, violence above the mere capacity of his human body. He saw it in his mind, the device he so wanted to have in his hands, and that time it could go wrong, it could bring death and destruction, the more the better. Colin thought about a grenade, he wished for it, and it materialized in his hand.
A round explosive the size of his own palm, shaking and burning with the contact of the world's elements, beginning its inevitable melting. Before the grenade's dissolution, Coli
n pulled its pin and threw it over OOOO, running away from the scene to escape the incoming explosion. He looked back at it and a big bubble of fire grew inside the restaurant, pushing tables and chairs away, all without sound.
Colin felt suddenly powerful with the destructive forces he could summon, and for one second he hoped to see OOOO’s body torn to pieces. But the creature just stood up and smiled at him.
“You’re doing great, aren’t you? That was very interesting! See, you’re creating things too!” it said.
Anger overtook his mind, eyes filled with rage, framing every shape with a furious filter. The restaurant’s ceiling dripped its first drops on the table. The World Voice wailed, its power overwhelming, no matter how distant. Colin's hope faded as things melted, his museum of old Earth turning into an indistinguishable mass of gray ooze, piece by piece.
“Hit me more, go on, it makes you feel good, doesn’t it? Anger is beautiful too. Don’t you think so? I do! You’re doing well, don’t worry,” OOOO said, approaching Colin.
His grenade destroyed a wall, scattering restaurant ware on the floor. His safe haven became a souvenir of the endless war he’d have to wage against the world, melted down and burned. Standing still, heart filled with madness, fists clenched, ready to strike again, he closed his eyes. Calmness kissed his wrist, pleading to come in and dominate his mind.
“I’m sorry, OOOO. I’m not this kind of person, trust me. I hate violence, you know? I’ve always been so weak that I never imagined myself getting into a fight,” he said.
“But you liked it, didn’t you? It is very interesting!” it said.
“Only because I didn’t get hurt. I tried to bleed, believe me, I did, and I guess I wanted to feel pain too. I don’t feel human if I don’t have any weak spot. Can you understand me? Well ... I have no idea of how things were in your world, so it’s hard to talk to you. And you were right all the time.”
“Right about what?”
“About the end of the world,” Colin said.
He sat down on a chair and gestured to OOOO to follow him. Neither the human nor the creature needed to rest their legs, but it followed its peer out of pure curiosity, placing itself on the seat in front of him. Colin thought about a glass of orange juice, the drink he’d mostly like to have at that moment, but he didn’t wish for it. Nothing he could bring to that universe would serve any good.
“I’m thinking about the human we found there in the cold room. I wonder how it was for him to get there. The door was locked from the outside, did you notice it?” he said.
“Oh, that’s so nice! What more did you see?” OOOO said, amazed at Colin’s perceptions.
“Nothing else. I just wonder how he got there. Was he so scared of the changes that he asked others to lock him inside? Or did someone throw him there like a prisoner? Or was it a prank, or a final act of torture?”
“What do you like to believe the most?”
“I believe ... Hm, I can only say what I would do in the case. I would never lock myself in a dark place like that in emergency times. So, he was probably put inside against his will, or by accident. He probably didn’t even know that things were so different out here right now. In a way, he was buried alive. Just imagine how much he must have suffered.”
“Amazing, isn’t it? I like to think that he was just trying to fit in. I’m not very good with the human mind, but he could be trying to fit in, couldn’t he?” OOOO said.
“What do you mean? He was isolated, how could he fit in? Fit in where?” Colin said.
“Fitting as much as he could against the rock. Seeing a hole and getting inside, calling friends to join in, to see how many can fit in in the same space, you know? The problem is that he didn’t find others to join him, so he had to do it by himself, and we all know that a small fit is insufficient to make one strong, don't we?”
“It’s not the way we work, OOOO. It makes no sense.”
“Maybe it does, doesn’t it? It's incredible the sort of things we can create when we have nothing else to do! It's good to keep an open mind, isn't it?”
Colin looked down in silence. He caressed his palm, coping with the lack of sensations in his immortal self. Without pain, what purpose did his senses have? Why seeing things, why listening to anything, why did touch matter? Without his home world, why continue living?
“Please, OOOO ... Can you bring Earth back?” he murmured to OOOO.
“You mean Terra, don’t you? Terra was your world's name. Why do you want it back? Don’t you like my creation?” It lowered the extremes of its lips near to its chin, saddened.
“No, I don’t like it. It’s a terrible place, I told you. Could you make everything normal again? I can’t live like this, please.”
“I think it’s so interesting ... I must meet other Creators later and hear what they think, must I not? Yes.”
“What about Earth ... I mean, Terra? Tell me if it’s possible!”
“Why, yes, it is possible to have it back! You’re a Creator too, aren’t you? You can create a world, and you can try to recreate Terra, if you want it so much. You don’t want that, do you? Why not create a different world, to make it more interesting?”
“Yes, I do want it, exactly the same! But I can’t create it, no, I don’t want to create anything. I just want everything the way it was. I beg you, please! Do it for me, and I'll help where I can.”
“Then it’s complicated, isn’t it?”
A drop of concrete fell on their table. Colin looked around and the entire restaurant gave strong signs of decomposition. The buffet table lost its feet to the Voice, floating on a slimy puddle. Many half-melted chairs lay dead on the floor, big drops accumulated on the walls, paraffin under fire. Colin stood up in frustration, sad to see more decay, not one light in sight of his endless tunnel. Being a Creator didn't interest him, and this resolution blocked his way.
They returned to the beach. An odd hope told Colin he’d find a different scene, still used as he was to the old world's dynamics. The only changes, however, came from the ever-growing mass of indistinguishable matter melting and blending with the surrounding objects. The ocean water penetrated the sandy mush, becoming one with it, smearing the boundaries between solid and liquid.
“Is this how we will live now? Bored, with nothing to do or see?” Colin said.
“What, are you bored? How come?” OOOO said.
“On Earth ... or Terra, as you name it, people did amazing things all the time. The world was beautiful, full of life, and we were creative. Look at your world now. It’s all turning gray, and the only living thing in it wants to die.”
“And isn’t that interesting? It’s a different experience, of course, isn’t it? It wants to die, but it can't. Besides, Terra was getting boring, as you were all repeating yourselves, and the world was about to end anyway, wasn’t it?”
“OK, let's pretend you're right, just to see where it goes. So, what do you propose? What am I supposed to do with all this free time in this awful place? Run away from the World Voice forever?”
“That sounds fun, doesn't it? But you can also create things!”
OOOO stopped and smiled with pointy teeth out of its lips. It looked straight at a fixed point ahead of them on the boardwalk, a tennis shoe turned liquid. A human being appeared out of nothing in the air, one palm over the floor, and fell down looking for balance. A man with skin white as paper, naked, his black hair curly like those of sub Saharan descent. He raved on the gelatinous wood pavement, suffering from the hostile world's fever around him, unable to breathe, unable to resist the powerful sorrow of matter.
In his only moment of conscience, the man looked at the pair of Creators next to him and trembled at the sight of OOOO, as the creature faced him with widened eyes and his terrifying smile of amusement. Colin watched him lose his skin to the unforgiving environment, melting after the agony of endless mute screams.
“You see, Creators are never bored! They can craft things, can’t they?” OOOO said.
<
br /> “What ... Oh, no ... What the hell? People are not things! Stop that, you monster! You created a living being just to watch it burn, I can't believe it. That’s ... That’s disgusting!”
“But it was so interesting! I never tire of melting stuff, do I? You saw how he danced when his arm muscles fell off, didn’t you? That’s the first time I saw it—”
“Don’t ever do this again! Do you hear me?”
“No, I don’t hear you, do I? That doesn’t make sense. Creators create!”
Another human showed up in the air, a woman in a Victorian dress, barefoot, shaved head. She landed elegantly, standing over her shaky feet with difficulty, given the ground's unstable nature. She looked down, disgusted at the slime under her soles, and then turned her head up, to meet Colin’s glance. As she prepared to speak, she put both hands on her chest and stopped moving. In her desperate eyes, Colin foresaw her inevitable death.
He turned his face away from her to avoid looking at her imminent meltdown, while her arms swung in full arches above her head, in the agony of her suffocation and death, and he wished for a source of air to envelop her body. He wished and he materialized it, for a strong wind blew all around her, allowing her to catch her breath and scream unintelligible words. The air, though, crystallized in suspension and fell like rain, leaving the woman back in the vacuum. Before Colin could think of anything else, she melted down, following the path of all other things.
Humans could get back to life, Colin realized. If he wanted, he could create them as well, couldn't he? But he would pay with their immediate dissolution, unless he could find a way to resist that world’s corrosive substrate and the World Voice itself. How to stand all that suffering, how to stand it forever?
“Did you see the bubble exploding from her head? You saw it, didn’t you?” OOOO said.
Colin saw it again in his mind, thanks to the creature’s words. He opened his eyes to escape from that bloody view, although the world around him contributed only to his misery.
