by Alex Raizman
The proof for that was in their surroundings.
The grass wrapped around their legs with every step, leaving angry red welts each time they tore loose. Thorn-covered tentacles lashed out from a bush, striking at the Sur-nah-him, who altered their path to avoid its reach. It seemed that every plant on this world was hostile. Crystal twisted her lip and threw a barrier of solid air between the bush and the people. No one’s dying while I figure this shit out.
She could feel that corrupted, fragmented will push back against her, but it didn’t impede her too actively. Just reminded her that she had to be careful while she was here. In her own nanoverse.
The thought gave her another chill.
Then there was a great crashing, and an enormous blob began to crest a hill. Pseudopods lanced out from its bulk, grasping and engulfing anything organic in its path. It was an amorphous blue mass, and the hill was being crushed under the sheer weight of the creature.
Crystal’s eyes widened. This was one of the cyan lakes she’d found so compelling from orbit. They weren’t bodies of water, but all-consuming organisms, and one of them was chasing the Sur-nah-him.
A few of the Sur-nah-him listlessly threw spears into the massive slime. Azure fluid poured from the wounds, and the bulk of the creature shuddered. More pseudopods erupted from the thing’s surface and wrapped over the wounds. The leaking stopped.
It hadn’t even paused in its forward progress.
The Sur-nah-him stared helplessly at the change. One sighed and began to trudge away. Another started to weep and fell to his knees. “No use...no use…” he said and held out his arms. “Just let it come for me.”
The one that had sighed reached for the weeping man and tugged on his arm, but the weeper pulled his hand free. “No more. Go.”
The sighing man tugged one more time, and when it didn’t work, he shrugged and left the weeper to his fate. He wasn’t running, just trudging through the grass that still tore at his ankles. There wasn’t any hope in his eyes - the man expected to die. It was just a question of lasting longer than the others.
Sod this, Crystal thought. With a blink, she teleported out of her staging area, appearing between the Sur-nah-him and the monstrous amoeba. Its pseudopods diverted towards her.
That counter-will she kept feeling was a barrier to her omnipotence. It slowed her down, weakened her. Changes on the stellar scale were a challenge, and cosmic changes were impossible.
But this wasn’t a star. It wasn’t even a planet. Crystal was sure she could do something here.
Crystal held out her hand, and the pseudopods slapped against an invisible force field. The Sur-nah-him started to shout and point as the tendrils crept over her barrier. With a flick of her wrist, she tore the appendages off, changing them to a cloud of bubbles. The behemoth shuddered.
Stay away from my people, Crystal thought. In an instant, she dashed close enough to touch the creature. She struck its bulk. Ripples began to spread across the creature’s membranous walls. The ripples intensified as they spread, and the creature’s skin undulated. In seconds, the entire thing was vibrating wildly. Just as it seemed it would tear the ooze apart, the beast burst into another cloud of bubbles.
Crystal watched in satisfaction as the tiny bubbles rose into the air and drifted away. The Sur-nah-him gave her listless, vaguely confused looks. “I am Crystal,” she said, using the calm but assured tones she called her “goddess voice.” Over the millennia, it had done wonders to awe the various peoples of her nanoverse.
Here, it was met with dull silence until one finally stepped forward. “What happened to the Devourer?”
“I turned it into bubbles,” Crystal said. She changed tactics, trying for the patient tones one would use to explain a difficult concept to a child. “I turned it into bubbles, and it floated away.”
The speaker scowled at her tone, which was a relief. It was good to see that these people had some emotion other than acceptance. “I was able to observe that. How?”
“I’m your goddess, love. I know I’ve been away for a long time, but...hey, where are you all going?”
The Sur-nah-him were fleeing from her. Some screamed. Some covered their heads and wept. The one that had given up in the face of the creature was presently streaking away from her, tears streaming down his cheeks as he wailed.
Crystal watched them, her mouth open in shock and confusion. How badly have I failed you?
She took a step after them, but then stopped. What was she supposed to do? Trap them in their terror and hold them against their will? Force them to accept that she wasn’t someone to fear, that she meant well? They’d probably die from fright if she tried the first, and for the second...Crystal had never, in any iteration of her nanoverse, violated a person’s free will. She had no intention of starting now.
So she could only stand and watch them run, absorbing the full guilt of their terror. These people probably had invented their own goddesses over the millennia. What kind of deities did the people who named themselves “those who cannot even hope for a slight improvement” dream up? Crystal had to clench her eyes shut to stop the tears from flowing.
“I’m sorry,” she said, even though they were out of earshot. “But I will make things better.”
She rose into the air until she could see the curve of Shadoth. There were hundreds of those blue circles. Now that she knew to look for it, she could see them shambling across the landscape, leaving destruction in their wake. No more. Crystal braced herself for the resistance and began to spread her will across the world.
One of the Devourers beneath her trembled. Crystal fixed her gaze on the thing, pinning it in place. “No more,” she said aloud.
The creature popped, bubbles floating into the air. One by one, its fellows followed - first shuddering, then bursting and drifting away. Purified of life, the water that had been trapped within them began to form clouds.
The tentacle-trees were lashing at the air, even with no prey nearby. Somehow, they sensed something wrong in their world and were trying to grasp at the source. Crystal snarled at them and focused her attention on the nearest one. At her command, it went rigid. An exoskeleton crept up its length until the tree was completely immobilized. She snapped her fingers, and the tentacles turned to antennae that grew through the chitinous coating. They fanned out and turned green as she added photosynthesizing structures to their cells.
They’d function close enough to trees now and would no longer need to feast on flesh.
On she went. Nothing too big, nothing so great it would push up against that wall of pressure, but enough to change the world.
When she was done, Shadoth wasn’t a paradise, but it was...livable. The Sur-nah-him would have a chance to build. A chance to live and grow. A chance to hope.
It’s enough. For now.
Crystal teleported back to her staging area. She pulled up the list of species again and started to count.
Seventy-two.
Let’s see who’s next, she thought, cracking her knuckles. At this rate, it would take her a couple decades in here to get to all of them.
Just enough time for Isabel to order food back in the Core.
Chapter 16
Rest, Relaxation, and Release
Isabel crossed her legs, resisting the urge to tap her foot.
Going through the internet for any information that could point to the United States government making its own gods was like looking for a needle in a needlestack. The internet was full of information that could lead that way…if one was willing to also accept that Beyoncé was controlling the masses with Illuminati hypnotic rituals in the form of dance moves, the Royal family was actually an ancient race of lizard people from space, Hitler’s grandson was planning a fourth Reich in Argentina, and some combination of chemtrails and vaccines caused either autism, SIDS, or both.
Hell, half the internet seemed to believe that her brother and the other gods – as well as the monsters and the Heresiarch of the Church of Adve
rsity – were actually government experiments gone rogue, and the radiation spike in Canada had been them trying to use a nuke to cover up the mess. Not that any of that was new information to her – when her brother had appeared on national news and not answered her goddamn calls, she’d started searching his name…
“You alright love?”
Crystal’s voice shattered Isabel’s train of thought. Because it was unexpected. Not for any other reason, Isabel reassured herself. “Welcome back,” she said brightly. “And yeah, I’m fine. Why do you ask?”
Isabel was struck with how ordinary she seemed here; in jeans and a t-shirt, she’d pass for any other exceptionally beautiful twenty to thirty-something. Outside of a life and death situation, or a room full of stars, Crystal easily blended in with the rest of the crowd in the restaurant. Really, though, what did you expect? Ryan looks mostly like himself if he actually bothered working out.
The goddess arched an eyebrow at her. “Well, because for a moment there you looked like you just bit a lemon in half.”
“Oh, it’s just… I’m not one hundred percent over Ryan blowing me off for the first chunk of all this.” Isabel shrugged. “I mean, I get the whole thing, but I was freaking out about him.”
Crystal smiled warmly at her at that. “If it’s any consolation, I think I did the same thing to my family when I was Nascent.”
“You think?” Isabel asked.
“It was a million years ago, love. My memory may be good, but things do get a bit fuzzy, yeah?”
“Yeah,” Isabel said softly.
“Penny for your thoughts?” Crystal asked.
“It’s …it’s stupid.” Isabel shifted in her seat and decided to change the subject. “So what do you think of Moonburger?”
“I think it’s perfect,” Crystal said, smiling. “Wi-Fi for your research, a heavy dose of grease to fortify your stomach for an evening of drinking, and it doesn’t look like anyone will care that we’re going to hang around after we finished eating. I think I’m in love.”
“I’m glad. I have a lot of good memories here.” Crystal looked at her in askance, and Isabel went ahead. “When I was a kid, Dad would take us here after school every Wednesday, and made us promise not to tell Mom. Then Mom would take us on Saturdays while Dad was out golfing and make us promise not to tell him.” Isabel laughed. “Then when Ryan started driving, we would come here on Mondays and promise each other not to tell Mom or Dad.”
“Sounds like you two were tight,” Crystal said.
Isabel nodded. “Oh yeah. Ryan was always a bit weird, but we never did a lot of those stupid sibling things. We’d fight, of course, but usually it wasn’t over anything big and we never really hit each other, even when we were younger. I think when he was a kid, he was afraid he’d break me, and when we got older, well…” She shrugged. “I was a bit afraid I’d break him.”
Crystal smiled. “Well, I’m glad you two had each other.”
“Me, too. Especially when our parents died. I guess that’s why…” There it was again, the subject she had been trying to avoid.
“Why it’s still bothering you that he didn’t get in touch?” Crystal guessed.
“Yeah. I’ve forgiven him, but I’m not quite past the hurt yet.”
“Isabel, love, I know it’s hard not to take that personally, but I promise you that it really wasn’t personal. The first stages of Apotheosis are incredibly difficult even when you don’t have an insane god and his posse hell-bent on destroying you. There’s a difference between ‘immediate’ and ‘important’. You’re the most important person in the world to Ryan and given that everyone in the world has suddenly become his responsibility, that’s saying something.”
Isabel swallowed the sudden lump in her throat. “I hadn’t thought of it like that. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
Again, Isabel looked for a new subject. “By the way, why are we going drinking tonight? I mean, it sounds like fun, but isn’t there a little too much going on to take an evening off?”
“Everyone needs to take an evening off when they can get it, or we’d all go bonkers, yeah? And we can get it now because we’re at a bit of a dead-end. That’s the other reason we’re going. Empyrean Provocation isn’t just a club; it’s a source of information, and I intend to find some. It’s also neutral ground, and Ryan has someone he needs to talk to.”
“So drinking and dancing is just a bonus?”
“Something like that.” Crystal grinned. “It’s also a lot of fun. By the by, love? Before you drink anything there – and I mean anything – make sure the bartender knows you’re a normal mortal, yeah?”
“I mean, sure. But why does that matter?”
“Some of the drinks would kill a mortal outright. Others could leave you a drooling idiot for weeks, some will ensnare your will and make you the slave of the first person to say your name, some will-”
Isabel held up a hand. “Okay, I see what you mean. Is it even safe for me to drink there?”
Crystal winked and nodded. “You won’t be the first mortal they ever served, and in the ten thousand years, they haven’t made a mistake. The only time things have gone wrong was when they didn’t know they were serving a mortal, or a mortal grabbed someone else’s drink. So you’ll be fine.”
“Okay,” Isabel said, deciding to not get more than buzzed. “Who’s Ryan meeting?”
“That’s for him to tell if he wants to, love.”
Isabel flushed and, once again, changed the subject. “So, let me ask you. In the last million years, what is the coolest thing you’ve ever seen?”
Crystal blinked. “How do you mean?”
“Coolest thing, however you want to define that. I know you must have seen some amazing stuff, so what comes to mind as the ‘coolest’?”
Crystal considered for a minute. “It’s really, really hard to pick one, but one thing that comes to mind is the first time I saw you lot. Humans in your proper form.”
Isabel leaned forward, suddenly intensely interested. “Go on?”
“So Neanderthals were around, and a few other hominids over the millennia, but none of them had gotten very far. Caves and all that, proto-languages like what crows speak, nothing too interesting. I was just about ready to pack up and head out to find a sentient species, any sentient species, capable of holding a conversation, and spend a few sodding millennia with them. I was barely using my powers, but even the slight drain had accumulated into a social hunger, and I was bored. Then one day-bam!” Crystal clapped her hands.
“Humans?”
“Yes, but that word wasn’t around yet. What I saw was a bunch of hairless monkeys with mud huts and spears, sitting around a campfire. They freaked when they saw me, yeah? I didn’t know what they looked like, so I was in my normal form, and seeing some kind of alien pop up really did them a bloody fright.”
Isabel giggled. “So that’s the coolest thing? Scaring the shit out of the first humans.”
Crystal smiled and shook her head. “Nope. It was what one of them did. See, gods can’t translate languages that aren’t to a certain level of development. So I can’t speak to crows, although my money is on those little buggers being the ancestors of the next sentients. But this one little early human, maybe five or six years old, didn’t run away from me. She ran straight up and looked at me with these big eyes and said, ‘Hello you look funny my name is Eve.’ All in a rush like that.”
Isabel nearly choked. “Eve? As in ‘Adam and Eve? That Eve?”
Crystal chuckled. “Kind of. Genesis is pretty allegorical, but yes, she’s the most recent ancestor all humans share in common. Biologists call her Mitochondrial Eve, but when angels passed along the bible stories to early humans, they edited it to something people could understand, figuring you lot would work out figure out the science later on. And I made sure they eventually got the name right.”
“So the coolest thing that comes to mind,” Isabel said after a moment, “is meeting the literal
mother of an entire species?”
Crystal nodded. “Why? Not cool enough for you?”
Isabel started laughing. “It’s on a scale of cool I can’t comprehend. On a 1-10 metric, it’s eleventy. Yeah, it’s cool enough for me!”
Isabel’s heart skipped a bit when she saw Crystal’s slight blush. “Well…glad I could answer the question. So, love, you ready to go get drunk with myths, legends, and your brother?”
