Weird Theology

by Alex Raizman

  "Oh, a problem you don't have to worry about for a good ten thousand years, or more. My nanoverse is dying; same way the core universe would eventually if it wasn't for the cycle of ending worlds to keep stars burning, yeah? So I'm going to wait for life to go extinct and collapse it all into a singularity. It’ll force it to go through a Big Crunch followed by a Big Bang. Total reset, start fresh." Crystal grinned. "I've done it more than a few times, love."

  "What happens if you don't?"

  "Entropy takes over, love. Galaxies fall apart, and you're left with a bunch of dead stars, brown dwarfs, free floating planets, and black holes. Then those start to decay or vanish due to quantum tunneling, and then...heat death." Crystal grimaced at the thought. "It's the only other way for a god to die for real, yeah? Let their nanoverse undergo heat death. Some of us just get tired of living and go somewhere quiet to let their nanoverse die."

  Thinking about a universe like that, dead and lifeless and cold, made Ryan shiver. Athena and Crystal gave him sympathetic looks, and Athena brought the topic back to its original point. "When you do a Big Crunch, though, you go through something like a Nascent period again. Not the fainting spells, but it's a bigger strain to use your powers, and during that time your death could be permanent, same as where you are now. Something you best want to save for when things are calm."

  "Gotcha," Ryan said, both glad for the information and sorry he had asked. Crystal seemed to pick up on his mood, and Ryan was reminded of how much he'd missed having her around.

  "Since I can't do much about that now," Crystal said, "I'll keep myself busy while you two tend to your nanoverses. Gonna do some recon, see if we can't find a nice safe place to have our battle with Enki without getting a bunch of civilians caught in the crossfire, yeah?"

  Agreeing that was the best choice, Athena and Ryan headed off to their nanoverses. While passing through Crystal's to get back to his, Ryan did his best not to look at those red, dying galaxies.

  ◆◆◆

  Ryan dropped into his nanoverse and pulled up the holographic display. He took a few moments to enjoy moving about the universe by flicking at the holograms.

  One display in particular drew his attention, the one that showed intelligent species. He pulled it over into view and expanded it. “Graphids are still there,” he muttered to himself, “wonder what happened to the other two?”

  Could be anything, Ryan reasoned. Asteroid strike, gamma ray burst, global ice age, global warming - the number of ways an entire species without space flight could die was extensive.

  Besides, there were so many more. Ryan flicked through the list, noting them one by one. Here was a species that lived on a world that orbited a red dwarf. They had no eyes and were covered in fur that looked like armor. There was a species on a gas giant that looked like enormous jellyfish. Apparently, they were using metal they syphoned from the air. Another species were plants that burrowed roots into the brains of unintelligent animals and rode them like meat suits.

  Okay, that one’s less wonderful and just gross.

  As enticing as meeting a whole new alien species would be, he was more interested in seeing how the Graphids had progressed. He dropped into realspace and set a course for their home world.

  A small part of his brain noted this was the first time he'd done anything major without support. Sure, Athena hadn't been with him when he met the Graphids the first time, but she'd been back in the staging area, so if anything went wrong-

  That part of his brain was interrupted as he got close to the Graphid home world, his mouth quite literally hanging open as he looked.

  The planet was circled by series of platforms of dark metal, large enough to qualified as a ring and far enough out to be in geostationary orbit. Similarly massive structures, the size of small moons, sat at the Lagrange Points. Vessels travelled back and forth, and when he focused on them, he could tell they were full of members of dozens of species.

  A particular ship that drew Ryan’s attention was painted black and glowed with red lights so bright they cast shadows on nearby planets. From the edge of the ring jutted huge spires that stretched for hundreds of feet and looked like horrid spines.

  It looks like a rebel ship should be running from it, Ryan mused. Like something out of the evil empire’s wet dreams.

  A quick scan told him no such ship existed, but his control panel informed him he was being hailed.

  When the holographic screen appeared, Ryan's eyes widened further. The man had the telltale grey skin and the stocky build of a Graphid, but too many features Ryan didn’t recognize. A glowing red eye with a metal iris that dilated as he peered at Ryan. Wires running from his forehead to his shoulders, which jutted back unnaturally like they had metallic wings. Ryan hit a button on his screen to scan the man. Genetically, he was a Graphid, but so many cybernetic augmentations had been jammed into his flesh, Ryan could barely see the original species. The cyborg Graphid glared at the screen, his telescoping eyes narrowing. "I am Daasti, Captain of the Fearmonger. You are violating Imperial Graphid Space - state your name and your designation or be disintegrated."

  Some perverse anger rose up from a pool Ryan didn't know he had. Days and days of being hounded by Enki, lectured by Crystal and Athena - and now someone whose entire life depended on his existence was giving him threats?

  "I don't have a designation. My name's Ryan Smith, and I'm your god, you totalitarian dipshit." I’m a good guy. This some messed up crap going on. This isn’t what I meant! It’s...it’s wrong.

  "Heretic!" Daasti screamed at the camera, his veins literally bulging with rage. "You will be purged in the true name of Ryan Smith for daring to claim to be our Lord and God! In the Name of Our Emperor, Ryan's Son and Heir of his Chosen, open fire!"

  The name of my what now? One of the larger ships turned to face him. It looked like the talon of some bird of prey, and the claws rotated to show a lens in the center. It was facing directly at Ryan.

  Seeing the incandescent energy building up in the center of the lens, Ryan felt his heart begin to pound. Apparently the Graphids had mastered fusion, and the harnessed power of a star was unleashed in a beam of white-hot plasma, an entire solar flare’s worth of energy lashed and bound into a single beam and expelled with enough force to scour a planet clean.

  His body screamed in terror, but his brain clenched its teeth in rage. They dare fire at me? With a flick of his hand, he stopped the beam, midway in space between the two ships. He glanced at the screen and saw Daasti's eyes begin to roll with fear. "Are you paying attention, Captain? Because you won’t survive a repeat performance."

  Daasti’s head jerked up and down.

  Ryan clenched his fingers, moving them towards a fist but stopping while there was a small gap between fingers and palm. At the same time, outside, the billions upon billions of watts of energy rolled into a cylinder less than a mile across. Making sure Daasti was watching, Ryan held his hand to his mouth and blew through the gap.

  Outside, all that power, enough to purge an entire planet of heretics, simply winked out of existence.

  "My God!" Daasti exclaimed.

  "Told you." For a moment, that perverse anger rose again, and Ryan considered waving his hand to erase Daasti's entire warship. But the rational part of his brain, the part that was still reeling from what he had done, tackled that rage to the ground and choked it out before he could wipe out thousands of lives for the sake of a slight. I need to get a handle on my temper. This is my mess. I need to clean it up.

  Daasti stared at him, too terrified to speak. Ryan leaned back against the console, letting his grin widen.

  "So, Emperor, huh? I think he and I should have a talk."

  ◆◆◆

  The throne room of the Emperor, Ryan's Son and Heir of his Chosen, was one of the Emperor’s favorite places in the entire station. It was the seat of his power. The vaulted ceiling was nearly a hundred feet over the heads of any who ventured within, and when they approached him the petitioners h
ad to walk nearly twice that length to reach his throne. The throne itself was thrice as tall as the tallest Graphid, and the walls were adorned with the skulls of species who had dared to oppose his power.

  “Your worship,” said this petitioner, one of his Admirals bowing low before him. The Emperor couldn’t remember his name. They all looked the same with their faces pressed against the floor. “I have received word from the Fearmonger. Daasti says that they have fired their main plasma cannon.”

  “So a world was eradicated.” The Emperor shrugged. “What of it? My empire is full of worlds.”

  “Nothing was eradicated, your worship. May I show you?”

  The Emperor gave him a magnanimous nod. “Of course.” A video began to play in the air between him. An exchange between Daasti and some lowly heretic claiming to be Ryan incarnate. Utter nonsense. Ryan was a myth, a fable, a drug used to placate the masses by claiming that there had been some mystical origin to their science, some grand purpose to their weaponsmithing, that-

  The plasma beam stopped in empty space, and after some more taunting from Ryan, vanished. The Emperor’s jaw fell open. “Ryan’s name,” he whispered.

  “Is it truly him, your worship?”

  Sweat began to bead the Emperor’s forehead, and he was never gladder that the Admiral could not look at him. The Admiral was a Freemind, and only the reeducated could gaze upon the Emperor in all his glory. Although I suppose I’ll have to make an exception. Whoever, whatever this being was, it had powers the Emperor had never imagined. “So it would seem,” he said, careful to keep any wavering out of his voice. “Send word to Daasti. I cannot wait to meet our god.”

  Of all the lies the Emperor had told his subjects over the years, that one may have been the largest.

  ◆◆◆

  Ryan was strongly considering turning this throne room pink just to prove a point as he turned to face the Emperor, his “son”. "So, you're the Emperor around here, huh?"

  Ryan, in his jeans and blue t-shirt, looked hilariously out of place here. The room was surrounded by men and women who looked like they were cut from the same cloth as Daasti, armed with fancy looking rifles and those mercurial swords. Need to pull one out to keep for myself when I hit the core world again.

  He had a feeling that after he was done here, they'd vanish before he’d have much time to make use of them.

  At the head of the room, on a platform that scuttled on spider legs, sat the Emperor, his alleged son. The sight of him was nothing short of revolting. His skin had been pierced by dozens of augmentations, many of which were gold and silver and, as far as Ryan could determine, purely decorative. The skin at the edges of those implants was beginning to rot, giving him a half-undead look. His legs were shriveled and warped from disuse - a cable connected the back of his skull to the platform, letting him control it mentally. His eyes were huge and lidless, with tiny implants occasionally spraying them with moisturizing water.

  "We are, your Divinity." Those wide, unblinking eyes were focused on Ryan, and his blistered tongue slipped out to moisten his lips between words. The voice was...well, if you could imagine a teapot with a particularly phlegmatic cough trying to speak, you had the Emperor's voice. "And we would ask of you - why have you returned after so much time? The Book of Science is nearly a hundred millennia old, Father."

  "Okay, don't - yeah. Don't ever call me that again. I don't have any kids." The soldiers at the side twitched at the blasphemy, but...well, can God blaspheme?

  “Perhaps you didn’t know,” the Emperor said. “When you gave us the Book of Science, and lay with Saphyn, you begat my ancestor. Your seed-”

  Ryan interrupted with a retching noise. “Yeah, don’t...that goes right up there with calling me father. I don’t want to hear you say that word again. Saphyn and I never got together. The only thing I gave her was knowledge, and we definitely were horizontal when it happened. Moving on, now that we've cleared that up..." Ryan stuck his hands in his back pockets, tearing his gaze from the monstrosity of flesh on the throne. He knew he was jumping topics, but the last thing he wanted was to let the Emperor ramble on any more. "A hundred thousand years? Man, time does fly when you're running around fighting a war with an evil god."

  Ryan snapped his fingers, creating a chair for himself. A nice comfy office chair, which he experimentally rolled a short distance across the floor. "Well, your highness, I swung by to see what you were making of the gifts I left you a hundred thousand years ago." Ryan still felt the anger seething below the surface. More than he expected, but he figured it was at least partly justified. They turned everything I had in mind into some perverse mockery of what I wanted. So he spun around to face the Emperor.

  Those lips were parted by blistered tongue again. "Well, your Divinity, we...created weapons, as you ordered. And then spread your worship across the cosmos! This entire Galaxy now bows to you."

  "Mmmmmhmmm. And the weapons, I'll admit, you got those right. But what did you do those who didn't worship me?" He smiled as he asked the question, trying to put the mass on the throne at ease. Set him up, Ryan. Set him up and knock his pudgy ass down.

  "We purged them, your Divinity. Over seventeen entire species have been eradicated - in your name, of course." That tongue, which was just getting grosser every time Ryan saw it, flicked out over his lips. "And others, like the soldiers here, were reeducated.”

  Ryan was silent for a long time. Seventeen entire species, wiped out in his name. "Wow. You're serious?"

  "Of course, your Divinity."

  Ryan rolled his chair over to Daasti. "You were reeducated?"

  "Yes. I had not seen the wisdom in following you, but now your light fills me!"

  Ryan looked at the man, then back at the Emperor. "My light fills him."

  "Yes, your Divinity. So, mmm, if I may ask...what do you think of your Empire?"

  “Eh. One second.” He held up a finger to silence the Emperor. “My light fills you?”

  “Your Divinity, I-” the Emperor began.

  Ryan snapped his fingers, and the Emperor’s mouth stopped emitting noise.

  “Now, Daasti. When you say my light fills you, what do you mean by that?”

  “I was lost. I rebelled against the Emperor. I sought to unmake all of Your work. I called you an evil god, a god of death. But now your light fills me!”

  “Mmmhmm.” Ryan looked at Daasti with his divine sight. A part of Daasti’s brain had lit up as he said, ‘your light fills me’. Ryan asked, “And what do you think of my light?”

  The same spot activated. “It is wonderous to be filled by your glory!” There’s a chip. In his brain. They put a chip in his damn brain.

  “Wonderful. You all have a real thing about filling, don’t you?” Apparently, the chip didn’t know how to handle that. Probably for the best. Ryan rolled the chair across the room, motioning some of the standing re-educated soldiers out of his way. He got to a window, which gave him a great view of ships coming in and out. He took a moment to study the devices they were using - it appeared they'd found a way to create stable wormholes.

  He could feel the Emperor's expectant look on his back. "Honestly, Emperor? You really want to know what I think of my Empire?" Ryan snapped his fingers again, allowing the Emperor to speak.

  "Of course, your Divinity."

  Ryan nodded, still not looking back at that pulsating mass. "I think you have a kingdom of rot, a dystopia of pus. I think you have created the most disgusting mockery of all that is right and good with science, and once I'm done dismantling it to its component pieces the only echoes of your legacy will be a cautionary tale on how one should never pervert reason like this."

  The Emperor's disgusting little voice piped up here, "Your Divinity, I mu-"

  Ryan whirled to face the Emperor, his voice amplified so that every single person on this massive moon of a vessel could hear it. "I AM NOT FINISHED."

  He enjoyed watching the Emperor quake. He kept his voice amplified so that everyone on the shi
p would hear every word. "You have the nerve, the absolute nerve, to claim to be of my blood, to commit horrors in my name, and then you ask me what I think of it?"

  The Emperor's wide eyes widened further. "You told us to build weapons!"

  Ryan stopped, taking a deep breath. "You're right. I did. My mistake." I have to do something. This Empire was awful. The fact that something like this had been created in his name disgusted him. The fact that he’d done it to get himself weapons appalled him. I condemned these people to thousand’s of years of torment just so I could have a cool sword. I have to think before I just fly off the handle. Ryan took a deep breath. This Empire maintained its control, as far as Ryan could tell, through two main venues: the wormhole network, and the reeducated. If he broke that control, it would give the pending rebellions a chance to flare up, to establish something better. It would mean years of war, but things could improve afterwards.

  Ryan nodded to himself. Time to take away their toys.

  Ryan snapped his fingers. The Emperor flinched. The soldiers flinched. When they realized they were still intact, they looked at him, until the Emperor worked up the courage to move his disgusting little meat hole. "What did you do?"

  "Oh, that? I just fixed a little loophole in physics you were exploiting. No more wormholes. Apparently, you all can't be trusted with faster than light travel, so I'm taking it away until you prove you can behave."

  The huge eyes bulged further. "What did you do?"

  Ryan tilted his head to the side, eyebrows going up. "In what way was that unclear?"

  "That will unmake the Empire! Without the wormholes, how will we control the slaves!? The network that keeps the re-educated in check - it will collapse!!" The phlegmatic teapot was shrieking now.

  Ryan gave him a thumbs up and a broad grin. "Look who's paying attention."

  "The Empire will collapse! The greatest civilization in history will be in ruins!"