The Arched World

by Davi Cao

  To push them back into normality, to begin their path of salvation, Colin removed all their food with a wish. With emptied tables, their chatter ceased. They stared at each other, confused looks darting from one place to another, a glimmer of worry shining in their pupils.

  “Is everybody drunk? Is the food really gone?”

  “Yep, I think it is. We had stuff here, right? I know I’m not in this world anymore, haha, but... hey, what the hell.”

  “It went ploft, just ploft, I saw it.”

  “Saw it? Where did it go?”

  “Disappeared, just ploft.”

  “Hector, fetch us some more from the store, will you?”

  “And let him do it all alone? You’re a big man, I’m a big woman, let’s see what we can find together.”

  “Sure, sure, never mind what I said, I’m a working man in my heart.”

  “We all are, but my body is not fit for work anymore, huh huh, if I’m doing something again, it’s not for the boss.”

  “No boss, it doesn’t matter anymore, this world is ours now.”

  Colin followed them and made sure that wherever they went, empty stores greeted their arrival. If they wanted to grab what they wanted, they’d ever have to work for it. Laughs subsided at every new frustration, and instead of mocking the world’s rules, they admitted defeat.

  “Ah, no, it was too good to be true.”

  “Wait, don’t despair, there’s got to be something around these parts, it was all filled up when I came around the last time.”

  “What if the fountain was a bad sign, instead of a good one?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, it cured my eye!”

  “So what? It could be the devil buying your soul...”

  “Well, he didn’t send me the contract for that, I tell you.”

  “He did! When you entered the fountain.”

  “You entered it too!”

  “Yeah, so now I’m as screwed as you are. We won’t find food anymore.”

  “If that’s the case, then we get back to the fountain. No need to worry.”

  “If it’s still there...”

  “Do you think it might be gone?”

  “That’s a possibility, yes. To make us suffer again, more than we did before.”

  “After the fountain, I don’t think we can get back to old life. It changed us.”

  “Ok, but what if it was just a trick, something to deceive us? We may have to get back to how things were earlier.”

  “I’d hate that...”

  “You wouldn’t, because we could still be together.”

  Roaming the empty neighborhood with the group, removing their supplies as they moved along, Colin smiled at his success. Scarcity held the secret, the propeller of human thought. Without it, people soon became vegetables. But their talk did more than he predicted. It gave him an idea of fighting Dalana’s destruction of his world with the power of Terra’s own rules.

  ∙ 10 ∙ Corporate family

  Colin walked alone. Billions of people existed in the planet he tried to fit on a col.loc, yet the streets on which he wandered, on the city where he was born, passed by him in silence. The further away he went from the lake, the more normal the city became, with businesses guarded by their owners and people going to work.

  A car at last crossed his path, lightening his way with the joy of humanity’s industriousness. A man cleaned the road, not hired for that, not minding work. The car stopped by the cleaner's side, an old man spoke to him.

  “How about the oasis? You don't need to do this anymore,” he said.

  “I'm tending the city. It's alive, and it needs care,” the cleaner said.

  “Forget about the city, pal. Let it die. You never have to do what you don't want anymore. We can finally be free. Hop in, I'll give you a ride.” The old man opened the passenger's door.

  “No, thanks, sir. I want to sweep the road. I'm fine. I see beauty in it.”

  “Well, suit yourself, then.” The car went on its way.

  In one house, the first inhabited one in New Terra, Colin found the savior of his world. Laura lay in bed, her small eyes opened and reddened, her black hair wet and stuck to her forehead, feverish and trembling.

  She stared at the walls with the pain of her restless dark pupils, twitching her thick eyebrows while her yellow skin burned. The house had place for three, each with an individual bedroom, a large kitchen and living spaces to accommodate them all. Amanda and Zach should have occupied two of those rooms, but the furniture gave no signs of that.

  Laura suffered alone in bed, an old and forgotten remnant of a destroyed world, like Colin. They differed in mortality, in the risk of illness.

  “It’s a good world, isn’t it?” Colin said to her, sitting at ease by the bedside to talk.

  She shook with fever, unaware of the Creator in her room. Being a mere creation, she lacked access to the realm of angels and gods, blocked by Ai.iA's will. For a mortal, retorting to the makers of things needed sacrifice and luck, for it depended on them being around to listen to them through prayer.

  Thus, she did pray, inside her mind, she asked for a cure, she begged for mercy and to keep living, now that she had returned to a good place, one almost normal. Colin, however, didn't have the ability to read minds.

  “Hello, Laura,” the TV set said, a fuzzy image of a man showing up amidst the blue. “I can see that you’re not well. Do you need help?”

  “Y-yes... Yes, please... Colin, Colin, I knew you’d... You’d come... I’m ill, help me, please!”

  It worked, then. Not interacting directly with creations didn’t mean Creators couldn’t create things that enabled them to communicate with the world. Colin warped the electromagnetic waves reaching her set and created an avatar of himself.

  “Do you want me to heal you?”

  “Please!”

  He wished for a body scanner to make a diagnosis, for an intact Laura, for the restoration of all her body tissues. In bed, she took a deep breath that flowed with ease, making her aware of the cure.

  She smiled, swept a palm on her wet forehead, pushing her soaked hair strands back and raised herself from the mattress. Sitting on the bed’s edge, she stared at the television screen, where half images of a person sprouted in intervals from blue to gray.

  “I prayed for you every day, I... I don’t know what happened, I got something... not a flu, not anything I knew. The doctor sent me home. Zach and Amanda ran away, they're off to see the world, born again, enjoying their new chance, they said. I thought I’d die,” Laura said.

  “I’m sorry for that. I can’t be everywhere at once, and things are changing again. I think this world is being destroyed.”

  “Oh no, don’t let it happen. We just got here, and it’s beautiful, it’s almost like it used to be. I don’t want to go to another one, no, that would be terrible!”

  “Not even if the new place was Heaven?”

  Laura flinched, looking down, biting her lips. She then raised her gaze to face Colin’s weak image on the screen.

  “Heaven without a Final Judgment is worthless. Why have I lived all this time if not for the chance of deserving bliss? God hasn't given us our world so that we could live anyway we liked. We have rules to follow if we want to go to a good place, and what is the good of a place where anyone can get in, no matter how bad the person behaves?”

  “But I created this world. Who is this God you speak of?”

  “The one who created you. The one who wants us to praise his name and live according to his will. We don’t deserve Heaven, no, not this way. You said this world is in peril, and I want to fight for it with you. Let’s work together, let’s put sense into people. You in your dimension, me in the realm of people.”

  “I’m glad I can count on you, Laura. I do need your help. I want you to become the prophet of Terra.”

  The music reached Laura’s ears when she closed her eyes. It came in faint whispers, unlike anything she’d ever heard, sometimes noise, sometim
es harmony. It called her with watery beats, with sweet vocal chords.

  She got out of her house and followed the whisper, roaming alone on the empty streets until flocks of people took the sidewalks in line, all heading toward the fountain that lured their dreams. Laura trusted them more than the music itself, for Colin had healed her and she felt a great need for getting the world back to its beginnings.

  She prayed in front of the park, “I know you’re here to protect me, helping me resist temptation.” Now that she stood a mere few steps away from the pool where people entered and turned into ghosts. Those around her smiled at each other and spoke of salvation, few daring to say more before finding out the truth. A peaceful procession, one person behind the other, walking in order, confident because the oasis seemed abundant, capable of fitting the entire world inside.

  Laura set her eyes on the fountain’s mast, its flowery decoration so intricate as to hide the water holes, and entered what they called Heaven. Her heart skipped a beat, her shins caressed the pool’s content with a flavor, something sweet crawled up to her body by the mere touch of that blessed place. “The Devil is a very charming creature,” she thought, struggling to fight the sense of well-being taking control of her every cell.

  Behind her, Colin tapped her shoulder, showing himself with caution. She turned around in disbelief, looking at the sky and at the fountain’s edge to make sure that she still stood on solid ground. That was Heaven indeed, if it united the worlds of men and Creators, and her heart burst in excitement, the weakness of longing. She hugged him.

  “Thank you for taking care of me, thank you. I want to help you, but it’s all so... It’s all so perfect. Who is the devil behind this?”

  “Can’t you guess?”

  “Oh, it is her, isn’t it? That’s too bad. Dalana saved us too, she protected us.”

  “I know. And who will want to work hard to find salvation if they can have Heaven easy as this?”

  “If we do it right, people will grow suspicious of this,” Laura said, staring at a couple floating on the waters next to her. “It’s not the first temptation humanity has faced, and it always ends badly. They ought to learn that there are no shortcuts.”

  He nodded at her. His energies mingled with the oasis, which drained his will to take people out of the fountain and return New Terra to its original plan. Relieved, he watched her go with fire in her lungs, unabated by deception, headstrong. Someone to share the burden of his goal, at last, someone not created by him.

  “This is Hell in disguise, my brothers and sisters,” Laura yelled, spilling water over the floating couples. “What have you done to deserve this? A world of misery and egotism, of moral decay and abandon. And yet here you are, in Heaven? No, my dear ones, this is not the Paradise of the righteous, this is just another apple to condemn us to the eternal fire!”

  The man in front of her, her target, smiled at her lunacy, sitting on the pool’s floor to discuss matters with Laura. Her voice wormed inside the walls of his head, though, and created a spark of doubt.

  “We must leave this place and let it rot without souls, for it feeds on us, it erases our spirit. You feel good, because that is the way of the parasite. It enters your body without pain and sucks on you, it even makes you feel good. This is not our place! Magic, enchantments, how can it be? You really think you’re not hungry? You actually believe you’ll always feel good? No, you won’t. You’ll tire of this boredom, and when you step outside, when you look for somewhere else, you’ll fall and burn, and nobody will be there to help you.

  This is a trap, my brothers and sisters! Come with me, let’s make the real world, our world, a place where Heaven will only come through our hard work, as the product of our own will, and not through the Devil’s labor. Come, raise with me, wake up from your dream, because that’s what it is, a mere illusion meant to cripple you, to make you believe that you can have bliss without toil, peace without industry, a future without work. You can’t, but you can make it yourselves, a good world, if we obey our commandments and live the path that is meant for us.”

  People fled the oasis, seduced by Laura’s preaching. She had a persuasive voice, a tone filled with truth and passion. The strange music pacified the waters, it caused gentle ripples on the pool, spreading perfume at every spilled drop. A woman kissed a man next to Laura, a quick kiss, a scared one.

  “We are in Heaven, but I'm still human,” the woman said, her eyes widened by despair. “How can it be?”

  “Deceit, my sister,” Laura shouted at her. “Evil won't seduce you with evil, no, it will use goodness, it will lure you with the biggest temptation. But it cannot transform you, no, for it lacks the power to do so, the power only bestowed to God, the true God.”

  The woman stood up, breathing heavily, stomping on the water on her way out of the fountain. The man she had kissed followed her, seduced by love and despair, and the power of their escape took others along. Their disgust at rediscovered mortality brought fear to the air, emanating from Laura's aura, the prophet, her tongue a weapon of Terra.

  Group dynamics worked under Laura's spell, ten converted people leading hundreds after them. “We're still human,” they murmured. “We can still die,” they said, hugging each other. The first woman to leave the fountain fell on her knees, taken down by a burning stomach.

  “I'm hungry!” she yelled, raising her arms over her head, shaking them as if in a trance.

  The man behind her knelt by her side, grabbed her waist to try to lift her up. He failed at that, too weak to leave the ground.

  “See, the fountain sucks you, it spoils you, destroys you.” Laura came out of the fountain, walking through a sea of scared people, some weak, some curious. “Follow my word, which is the word of truth and salvation, and you'll have true Heaven, the Heaven of immortality.”

  Her discourse woke people up and made her rich.

  Colin helped Laura by filling in her bank account. She got more money than she could ever dream about, making it possible to perform the role she’d always wanted in the world. The savior, the prophet, the evangelizer.

  She bought half the city’s industries, a third of the nation’s market chains. Money abounded, she could have everything, infinite wealth, even bypassing regulation to dominate the whole economy! With Colin by her side, the word of Terra gained a strong footing under that universe, despite the col.locs, despite the unusual humans with their own ecosystems.

  “Scarcity is the engine of our moral, my dear ones,” Laura said in front of a camera, her image broadcast nationally in her TV show. “We are often tempted by abundance, attracted to magic, to easy answers to our anguish, aren’t we? Don’t feel guilty, you’re not alone in this suffering, we all feel the same. Shouldn’t you deserve to have a good life? Yes, we all should have a good life. But even if we are lazy? Even if we are mean? No, this is not the path of spiritual growth. How can you grow if you don’t get frustrated? If you don’t get mad at problems? If everything is always perfect, how can you become a better person? Heaven is only good if you’re already a better person. If you’re still not, then you must prove your worth and change yourself. Follow me, I can guide you.”

  Laura played the capitalist game without following the rules. The owner of infinite money, she hired double or triple the people her companies needed, for the mere sake of saving them from idleness. If someone, anyone, ran from the oasis and asked for shelter under her wing, she’d always have a spot for more hard, saving labor.

  “I will become a better person, I want to work, I want to worry about food and pay the rent, I want to fear the future,” one said to her.

  “You are welcome with us, my dear. Save yourself and help us bring the real Heaven on Earth, under God’s guidance.” She checked her computer screen for the contact info of one of her managers. “Maurice is going to care for you, on the fourteenth floor. We have plenty of salesman spots available.”

  “Thank you, Miss Laura. You won’t regret that.”

  From he
r building downtown, she commanded her rising empire with little concern for money issues. The administration was an independent body of its own, for which she cared little. Her interest lay in dealing with people, in hearing their pleas and aiding their thirsty souls. She kept her mind alert against hypocrisy. Terra’s fate meant as much to her as it did for Colin.

  He followed Laura’s moves with the dedication of a protector, leaving Dalana’s oasis in peace. Streets bustled with cars, people flocked the streets after work to fulfill their insatiable needs. The city came back to normal, his world one step further in the path of consolidation.

  Silent nights crept on the col.loc and people slept. A Creator led a lonely life if he existed without friends, having to stay awake while the rest found their peace. One human immortal shared his anguish in that city, the same woman who challenged his worlds. He resented her fountain of bliss, and yet he missed her presence and appreciated her interference. Her oasis triggered his reaction, making New Terra stronger than before.

  In the calm night of Laura's acquisition of the city's debt, he stepped in the oasis. Water greeted him with warmth, the music massaged his ears, happiness soothed his heart. Nobody in sight. He walked the mast’s way until the horizon of trees disappeared behind him. At a distance, a tiny black spot, dark as the night, a shadow on the pool. Dalana played by herself, spinning on the water, waiting for him.

  “You fought back,” she said, watching the upper col.loc take half the sky with its dim brightness.

  “I need Terra, you know that. You still have your fountain.” Colin sat by her side, water up to his neck.

  “This place was for you, it was meant to heal you, to make you feel good and enjoy what you have.”

  “That’s not what I need. It’s easy to forget my old life and focus on it here. It’s difficult, though, to know that an entire universe died only because other beings got bored with it.”

  “I wanted Terra’s demise as well, you know?”

  “You did?” Colin lifted his eyebrows, a heavy hand pulling his heart down.