The Arched World

by Davi Cao

  He crafted them a hovering platform that accelerated faster than an airplane, raising in a vertical line to reveal the col.loc’s arch on the curvy horizon.

  “All those little islands in the Caribbean, I have no idea of how many existed. I don’t even remember all the countries, to be honest,” Colin said, the ocean’s blue reflecting on his brown skin, night nearly gone in the continent below.

  “No reason to be ashamed, you lose nothing with that. Countries are a silly idea,” Dalana said by his side, looking at him, not down.

  “But they are a part of Terra, so what do I do? About the islands and the countries? Leave them blank on the col.loc?”

  “Well, for the geography, create them at random, and for the nations, create a set of rules and let the people sort it out on their own. When you create a world, you don’t mind every detail, did you know that? You leave a lot of room for improvisation. A set of simple rules, and it all comes together nicely.”

  “Yeah, but... what are Terra's rules? Oh, well, anyway, I’ll just do what I remember and let the rest sort itself. They were not important in the first place.”

  “Not for you.”

  “Right, not for me.” Colin admired his Terra taking shape again on the col.loc’s surface, a Mercator projection spread over an arched cylinder, the poles stretched to the universe's walls, disappearing in unreachable dimensions. Scattered islands filled the empty oceans, the major geographical landmarks created in all their glory.

  “How will plants breathe with this weird sun? I got the col.loc’s rotation to match that of planet Earth, but I’m not sure the plants and bacteria will be fine with this elongated star,” Colin said.

  “Make them thrive under it. Just wish for it, and materialize it. Puff! Simple, isn’t it?” Dalana said.

  “That simple? Ok, that won’t affect the world, so there you go.” With his wish, billions of green creatures suddenly got a boost in their energy capacity across the planet.

  “If you want an exact Terra, do you know what the funny thing is?”

  “I can think of many weird things, but what do you mean?”

  “Your world had the concept of culture. How are you going to do without the myths derived from constellations and planets?” Dalana said, amused at watching him struggle with all the problems he faced for dealing with creation that way.

  “Ah... Hm... What do you suggest? Sorry, I have no idea.”

  “Turn the ancient sky into an art form itself. A product of imagination, a human legacy spreading through time and space, a game played since childhood. To paint on the sky!”

  “Good, this way we can keep fantasy where it belongs and keep a part of old Terra alive,” he said, thinking about it, and wishing for it.

  “Do the same about the moon.”

  “The moon?”

  “Yes, you had art and a part of the imaginary focused on the moon. Turn it into something else.”

  “Can’t the neighboring col.loc’s fit in with it? They are the new moons and planets.”

  “Fine. If that fits you...”

  “It does. What’s not nice, though, are those edges,” Colin said, looking right to one of the universe’s walls, as far as his eye could see, where Terra’s col.loc faded into the infinite beyond space.

  “I see. They’ll be the greatest mystery of physics, it’ll bug people all around the arch.”

  “It will, won’t it? Any suggestion?”

  “Let them go there. They’ll never understand what’s happening on the other side, and having a mystery to solve matches Terra well.”

  “You’re right, again. It’ll be funny to watch what they think of it.” Colin wondered about the future in that strange simulation of his home planet, fearful of having to spend centuries in there. “Ah, no, that’s one big problem, indeed.”

  “What?”

  “The economy without a satellite network. Without GPS and fast communications, how can people trade and keep production going all around the world? That will be a disaster!”

  “Only if you wish so.” Dalana put her hand on her front pocket and moved her jaw up and down mechanically, her way of cheering for Colin’s change of mind.

  “I don’t wish for it. But does it have a solution? Can you help me?”

  “Let them sort it out. They are ingenious creatures. If the economy is bad, well, it’s always been bad for most people in Terra, anyway.”

  Colin swallowed dry. He searched inside his mind for a solution, cables, antennas, gigantic towers, every known hypothesis considered and tested. Dalana stood mute by his side, waiting, merely waiting for his next words.

  His blood warmed under his cheeks, embarrassed by her mocking gaze, her expectant smile. He stared at her in the search of new ideas, he who specialized in managing other people's thoughts, not his own, and instead, he found only the face of a creature who understood the burden on his shoulders.

  “You know what a really big problem will be for you?” she said.

  “Oh, so many...”

  “Seasons.” She laughed. “How do you have seasons in a celestial body attached to walls?”

  “Damn... Antarctica without the ice, the poles without coldness. Can I make, err... Hm... Artificial seasons?”

  “Of course you can. Make it a rule, something to happen in specific places at a certain time, and there you go. Happy?”

  “Not so much. How are people going to find an explanation for this change if it happens this way only because I wanted to?”

  “They will explain it, they will find a way.”

  New Terra wrapped the col.loc in all its glory, ready for action. Beautiful, cloudy, filled with cities and farms, forests, deserts, animals of all kinds, an environment ready to greet humans and allow them to live like they used to in their original world. It missed its people, humans to repopulate the world, a mere matter of wish from its Creator's mind.

  “I think it will make some noise, right? It’s not exactly like Terra, but close enough.” Colin ordered their flying platform down again.

  “You can’t ever create two things the same. You change as you go through life, and your world changes with you. You’ll never have the Terra that you want.” Dalana stared at him with a face so dark as to show him only her friendly eyes.

  Seven and a half billion people at the time of Terra’s destruction. About two hundred nations. Six major landmasses separated by at least three big oceans, inhabited disproportionally according to weather patterns and the quality of their soil.

  Filling new Terra with all those people, having Dalana by his side, after finding so many problems to deal with, after knowing that the Terra of his dreams depended on finding Mae and having her recreate things the same, Colin had a glimpse of an alternative planet: what if Antarctica wasn’t an ice desert? A whole civilization rising from the former south pole, a new range of possibilities coming up, new stories to show.

  How would the planet fare if the Sahara wasn’t a desert? If the Amazon jungle was vengeful and fought against man to dominate the Americas? Possibilities, possibilities, so many of them, such a new, fantastic place and... No!

  Wouldn’t it be great to meet Angeline again, the love of his life, never having to see her melt? Terra, the Terra of his memories, intact, at least once more, it would be worth the sacrifice. So, the world got its people, seven billion and a half of them, and all inherited the history of a dead world.

  “We should give Laura, Amanda and Zach a good life. It's going to get crowded in here,” Dalana said, walking toward their house.

  “Of course, they can have anything they want. Good jobs, a nice house, lots of money—” Colin began to say.

  “Money? You have the choice of giving them Utopia and all you can come up with is money?”

  “Anything they want, but they’re Terra’s people, they’ll need money,” he said in self-defense, standing on Laura’s front lawn.

  “They did it, at last!” Zach said, coming out of the door, interrupting Dalana and Coli
n, who stopped talking to watch their reaction.

  “Let’s knock on some doors, we have to make sure they didn’t play any tricks on us.” Amanda came out right after him.

  Laura followed her friends, looking at the street now occupied by a few parked cars. The sound of music echoed through the air, a few childish laughs came from somewhere near. She trusted the Creators, she already breathed the air of a better world, a world where the honey from a naked woman's backpack gave her a sense of infinity, of a closeness to God.

  Zach knocked on a neighbor's door. Painted yellow, childish scribbles vandalizing its walls near the floor. “Hey, I’m Zach, and this is Amanda, and that one over there is Laura. We’re living in the white house over there, I guess we’re your new neighbors. Just came here to say hi.”

  “Oh, great, you’re nice, you guys, thanks for showing up. That’s what we need, got it, more people like you, more welcoming, more enthusiastic. I hope you don’t stop coming. So, let’s begin this neighbor stuff. Come on in, all of you, my wife cooked some great meat and it’d be an honor to have guests. My name is Lucca, by the way,” a man with a mustache said, leading them into his spacious living room where two children played over a soft carpet.

  Zach and Amanda entered with a big smile on their faces, at the edge of tears for the joy of meeting humans again, creations like them, brothers and sisters from the same concept. Laura waited for them go, turned around and, before following her friends into their neighbor’s house, spoke to her angels.

  “Thank you, Dalana and Colin. Wherever you are, thank you. That’s just what we needed.” She twitched her lips in honest emotion.

  For that sentence alone, the burden of creation vanished from Colin's shoulders and lifted him to the realm of pure satisfaction. He smiled and had restless feet, wanting to dance and to jump, ashamed of expressing his joy in front of Dalana other than by speech.

  “It’s a beautiful world, isn’t it?” he said, controlling his voice.

  Dalana spun her legs at the tips of her feet, showing unrest in ways so alien to Colin’s humanity that he hoped for words coming out of her mouth. The language of Creators translated purposeful verbiage, not subtle gestures, leaving him blind and deaf against her body expression.

  She entered the house, inviting Colin with the mere power of her decision, and they both marveled at the generous family setting the table for the Terran refugees. Fiery smells of red spices and herbs took roasted meat on a ride through the air, making words taste better, tales of lives on a wonderful world, a world where the World Voice's spell played no part. Children laughed and infected the humans with happiness, toothless mouths taking over the three visiting bodies with the joy of life.

  The scene fueled Colin's dreams. He saw himself among them, returning to his old life by the mere power of will, for he watched them and didn't eat, didn't speak, didn't take part. An outside spectator, glad to watch happiness unfold in front of his eyes, taking him closer to his goal.

  “It is a beautiful world, indeed,” Dalana said at last, leaning her head on his shoulder.

  Zach made a new friend in Lucca, the kind neighbor, and when it got late, he, Amanda and Laura returned home with hearts renewed. They breathed in relief, feeling safe again and wishing they could fly. Although they had no idea of what sort of life awaited them the next day, now back in a human world, they went to sleep in peace.

  An immortal with no need to rest, Colin shared their excitement and wanted to see more of his creation. He took Dalana’s hand, pulling her along with jumping steps, and they spun and hopped and yelled at the road. Past 11:00 p.m. many people slept, but many others enjoyed the last minutes of the night, where the joy of living often expressed itself most vividly.

  Colin, always fearful of the night in his mortal life, jumped on the passing cars with Dalana right behind, and she played with him, keeping her fingers clenched on his palm, now dodging fast vehicles, now facing them straight on and laughing at their impossible deaths.

  They soon got to a park where trees swung in the chilly wind, where light was so faint and scarce that the col.locs painted a battlefield on the sky, some fully colored, some half obscured, one on top of the other, hidden, displayed, crisscrossed by long energy beams giving them life and death.

  Couples lay on the lawn on checkered sheets watching the spectacle above their heads, wondering what might lie in those worlds beyond, curious and yet cautious, respectful of the myths.

  Colin rolled on the grass to contemplate, accompanied by Dalana, who knew how to dance even lying down. She watched Colin’s eyes wander from col.loc to col.loc, wondering whether he missed the starry sky of Terra or found satisfaction in that alien land so receptive to his projects. People murmured near them, they spoke of love and friendship, they dreamed, they filled the world with wishes and irony, they laughed at it, they cheered for it.

  “I want to go to the beach and take a good sea bath! Do you want to go with me?” Colin said, hands on the back of his head, face relaxed.

  “Of course, that will be great. I love to see you like this, it makes me almost regretful,” Dalana said, her voice shaken by true joy.

  “Regretful?”

  “Yes, sometimes I thought only a better world would make you happy as you are now.”

  “This is a better world.” He turned to face her. She closed her eyes. Black as night, Dalana’s body reflected little light and disappeared in shadows. “Come on, do you like to race? Let’s see who gets to the beach first!”

  “No, I don’t like competitions of any sort, so you— Hey, wait, wait for me, I’m coming too!” Dalana stood with a quick jump to catch up with him.

  Never getting tired, both could run to eternity, they could force their bodies to the limit and reap all the potential they could gather from their muscles. Faster meant better technique, and in that regard Colin lost to Dalana, for she loved testing new ways of locomotion, unlike him, and mastered many of the human ways of walking and running.

  Despite her advantage, though, she used her skills to keep up with his pace and chat while they looked for the beach, crossing crowded bohemian streets, empty office districts and creepy harbor warehouses.

  Colin threw himself in the sea when he first stepped on the yellow sand, recreating sand and water in his own dimension so that he could feel it for real. Creators had no direct interaction with creations in that world, and he didn't allow it to cripple his experience on the beach. He let the tides take him in and out of the water, laughing at Dalana, who tried to swim all curled up on herself, a human ball with steering arms, emerging, and submerging at repeated intervals.

  “I know this isn’t home, but it feels like it... It’s great being home,” Colin said, spitting salty water.

  “You did a good job, and you’re enjoying it. Besides, it’s very different in many ways from Terra, and you’re ok with it, that’s the greatest accomplishment. Little by little, you’re getting the hang of being a Creator. I’m glad I can watch you grow like you’re doing. This is a beautiful thing.” Dalana stood on the water to speak, giving the speech the special attention it deserved in her mind.

  “Yeah, well, you know... If it weren’t for you, I’d have satellites crashing into other col.locs right now. I’m terrible at solving problems.”

  “Because you want to. Because you keep yourself chained to the same idea that—” Dalana began to say, then she saw a crowd appear on the street, coming from an alley.

  In front of the curious group, a naked woman walked alone, surrounded by a misty disc that made her the center of their universe. The woman was aWa, herding drunk and prudish people forming a flock who struggled to understand her.

  ∙ 7 ∙ Prison

  The first night in the recreated world brought excitement to people lucky or unlucky enough to cross aWa’s way. She walked, indifferent to those around her, after countless attempts to join other humans. They never turned their backs to her, and none had an ou.uo of their own. Different col.loc, different p
eople, so people became, to her, just a part of the landscape, obstacles through which she would walk until the end of times.

  She did thus not without affecting them. A trio of drunk friends with jackets soaked in cheap beer surrounded her, their disheveled hair flowing through the air at every quick turn of their dazzled heads.

  “You lost your mommy, girl?” one said.

  “Where's that party you're coming from, eh, take me, come on, it's boring in here,” another one said.

  “Yeah, yeah, you don't want to leave us poor folk alone, do you, ma'am,” the last one said, taking a sip from a beer can.

  AWa walked, eyes lost to the horizon, following the road by the sea. The drunks played with the little things spinning around aWa, big flies circling a stinking bum, laughing at their own perception. They punched the misty cloud in an attempt to hit the ou.uo, failing every time, dizzy with too much alcohol, giggling at every disjointed strike.

  “I wish I could take these guys out of here. That’s the sort of people I’ve always hated the most,” Colin said near aWa’s procession, shaking his head.

  “Then do it. Give them a different mind, make it impossible for people to do such things to others,” Dalana said by his side, marveling again at the ou.uo.

  “No, I wasn’t serious. I don’t like these guys, but they have a role to play. If they should behave differently, it shouldn't come from brainwashing.”

  “In this sense, maybe you’re right.” She spoke as her body passed through an old lady who came marching toward aWa.

  The old lady had a blanket in her hands, extending it onto aWa’s body. A friend of hers helped cover the naked woman from breasts to thighs. Having nothing to fix the blanket in place, they held both ends with their fingers, walking at the same pace while nodding at others to help them with pins, pegs, or something. They tried pushing aWa to the side, to force her to stop walking and make their job easier.

  “You need help, miss, so please stay put. We’ll get you something to wear and call the police to see if your relatives can find you. Alice, did you call the police already? No? Do it, do it now, this one here is running from someplace, she definitely is,” the old lady said.