Strange Cosmology

by Alex Raizman

  She met his eyes, and Dale realized there was no hope of appeasing her.

  He raised the gun in a last, desperate act of defiance. With a gesture, Bast sent it flying out of his hand.

  “Admiral,” Bast purred. “Admiral Dale Bridges, United States Navy.”

  He tried to get up, wanting to die on his feet. That suddenly seemed very important.

  She allowed him to reach his knees before reaching out and sending an electric shock through him, locking his muscles in place. He strained, every nerve on fire, but it was no use. He heard a soft whimpering, and realized it was him.

  “I like you like this, Admiral,” she said. “Kneeling before me. You’re going to get very good at that, I think.”

  She let the current hold him for a little while longer, then released him to fall prostrate before her. “How long was I your prisoner?”

  Dale coughed, and blood sprayed. He wished he wasn’t dying with so much left undone. He’d come so close to stopping these monsters. At least he knew that heaven awaited him after death. That would have to help him endure the hell he’d suffer before he got there. “Go to hell, you monster.”

  She sighed and kicked him in the face, shattering a few of his teeth. She leaned down to put her face close to his, her faux-friendly demeanor disappearing. “I have questions, Dale. And you are going to suffer greatly, even if you answer them. I won’t lie to you about that. But if you refuse me, if you hold on stubbornly to this belief that you still have any power here, I’ll make you just like her.”

  They both looked at Cassandra, gnawing at another heart, her face empty of any real awareness.

  “I’ll starve you,” Bast continued, “until you’re mindless and desperate. Then I’ll let you loose among your family. Or friends. Or in a school, or the White House. Whatever is the worst for you, personally. And believe me, at that point, you’ll feast. And when you’re done, you’ll beg for more.”

  Dale Bridges shuddered, but she wasn’t done. “If you do talk, then I’ll just torture you until you die or I get bored, whichever comes first. You’ll be the only one to suffer for what you’ve done. Now. How long was I your prisoner?”

  Some part of him considered fighting, still spitting defiance in her face…and then pictured himself attacking his daughter, his grandson…

  “Two weeks,” he whispered.

  Bast patted his head, exactly how one would praise a loyal dog. “Good boy. Now, there’s one person still missing. Your head researcher. Pivarti? Cassandra told me about her, and I’m very much looking forward to meeting her. Where is she?”

  At this, at least, Dale could take some satisfaction. “You walked through her ashes. She burned herself so you couldn’t take her alive.”

  Bast looked over to the smear on the ground, frowning. “How the hell did she manage that?”

  “Thermite suit. Said she’d resurrect at her…what was the word? Nanoverse.” He snorted bitterly. “She’s a monster like you. And she’s still free.”

  “There will be time to worry about her later,” Bast said dismissively. “For now, I’m more concerned with you.”

  Admiral Dale Bridges screamed for a very long time.

  ***

  Crystal descended to the world of the Sur-nah-him, back to the city of Na-hara, back to the king’s “palace”, where chaos reigned. She had expected as much because when she had restored the planet and resurrected its people, she hadn’t erased their memories of the apocalypse. They were all aware that they had been destroyed, and then miraculously saved. She was sure that once they calmed down, it would do wonders for their ability to hope. Not to mention her reputation.

  “Relax!” she shouted, gaining everyone’s attention. “It’s over. You’re all fine. Better than fine. Your planet is actually livable and the psycho princesses are gone.”

  Most of the Sur-nah-him looked skeptical at best, but Xurir-who, come to think of it, had been looking shaken but thoughtful instead of completely out of his gourd-nodded slowly. “So you have defeated your...daughters?”

  Crystal coughed. “I wouldn’t exactly call them my daughters, they were more…”

  Conceptual manifestations of my dark side that came into being when the last big crunch spread the corruption of another, evil god across the universe? C’mon, Crystal, don’t blow the poor man’s mind.

  “…sisters,” she finished weakly.

  “I am glad,” he said.

  King Uepth, apparently deciding it was time to stop cowering behind his throne, scuttled out and cowered in front of her instead.

  “Oh, great goddess,” he cried. “Savior and deliverer. The people rejoice at your mercy and-”

  “Yes, yes. Uepth, I’m sure you’re a very good king,” Crystal said, although she definitely wasn’t sure about that, “but I have something more important than kings to think about, and frankly...you just don’t suit. Stand up and be quiet for a minute, love.”

  Uepth did as he was told, looking awed, terrified, and just slightly affronted.

  “Now,” Crystal said, turning back to Xurir, “my business is with you. Here.”

  Crystal smiled and handed him the sphere she had made. It had taken an incredible effort, but she thought it was well worth the push.

  “Go ahead,” she said. “Take it. Look at it.”

  Xurir did, and after a moment, whispered “Goddess…it’s full of…thousands of stars.”

  As long as Crystal could remember, gods had used power stones to create demigods within their own nanoverses. At some point, everyone tried to create a nanoverse within a nanoverse, and everyone eventually accepted that it was impossible. Power stones were a perfectly good alternative, but this time Crystal had wanted more. Her demigods would not only need to be shepherds and guardians, but also watchers. If corruption began to resurface, it needed to be seen before it had the chance to take root.

  Xurir was still staring into the sphere. “What...what is it?”

  Crystal kept her voice was soft, not wanting to interrupt the man’s wonder. “It’s two things. It’s a source of power that allows you to assert your will over some of this reality, and it’s a window to this entire universe. It allows you to see everything that happens within this cosmos. I call it a holoverse, and having it makes you a god too.”

  Xurir dropped the holoverse as if it had suddenly caught fire “I don’t…I can’t be a god!”

  Crystal picked up the holoverse and handed it back. Xurir was hesitant, but Crystal gently took his hands, put the holoverse in them, and closed them around the sphere. “Relax, love. You won’t have the world ending levels of power that I do, or that those other three did. But you’ll be able to protect your people. Eventually, you'll even protect others. You’ll be immortal, so long as this isn’t destroyed.”

  And, Crystal added to herself, you don’t have to worry about letting an entire universe die if you fail.

  Xurir was shaking in shock. “Why…why me?”

  “Because you foraged and returned safely forty-three times. Because you risked your life time and again to protect those weaker than you. Because you dared to believe I might be telling the truth when I said I came to help and not destroy. There is no bravery greater than pushing through fear, except perhaps being brave enough to hope.”

  “I don’t deserve this,” he whispered.

  “And because you think that, I know that you do.” Crystal put a hand on the man’s shoulder. “You won’t be alone. I’ll be spreading these across your planet, and across the universe. There will be others, as quickly as I can find the right people.”

  “But why are you doing this? Why give power away?"

  Crystal pointed upwards. “Your sun. It’s green.”

  Now Xurir looked like he thought he might be joking or testing him somehow. “Yes. It…yes, that is the color of the sun.”

  “Ah. But it’s wrong.”

  Xurir blinked, slowly. “I’m…sorry? What should I call that color, then?”

  “No, no, the
color is called green, but the sun shouldn’t be green. The fact that it’s green is the symptom of a sickness afflicting the entire universe. Stars should be yellow and white and blue and red! The space between them should be unmarred black!”

  After a long moment, Xurir nodded in acceptance, which was good, because Crystal had no idea how to convince him if he didn’t take it on faith. Or maybe he’s just humoring the crazy deity that’s claiming the sun is the wrong color. Crystal didn’t know which and decided it didn’t matter. She’d show Xurir how things should look.

  “So…” he said, “Am I to do something about it?”

  Crystal laughed. “I like your attitude, Xurir. I think you’re going to do very well. But right now I’ll take care of things. I’m going to fix the sun and a lot of other problems. But the corruption will come back, eventually. And there are other types of corruption, too. Sometimes, it’s obvious. Sometimes, it’s insidious. It might be the stars turning the wrong colors, or monsters roaming the land, but it can also be callousness or cruelty or decadence in your own people. You gods and goddess will fight against all that, and someday you may have to end the world and create a new better one. That will keep the corruption at bay until I can fix it again.”

  Xurir took a deep breath. “So, without this corruption, there will be no evil?”

  “Oh, I wish.” Crystal shook her head. “I’m not taking away anyone’s free will. You lot still have the absolute freedom to choose to be monstrous to each other. I’m just making sure that there’s nothing beyond your control that forces things to be worse. You’ll need to decide what to do about the ordinary arseholes yourself.”

  “That’s…a lot to take in.”

  “Well, you have a long time to think about it. One of the perks of immortality, love. For now...can you take it on faith?”

  Several seconds passed, followed by minutes, as Xurir turned the holoverse over and over in his hand. “I can. I will keep the faith, goddess of hope. And I will protect this world.”

  Crystal rested a hand on her shoulder. “Good. I’ll be back to check on you. I won’t leave you without guidance. Might be a few millennia, but I’ll be back.”

  “Thank you,” Xurir said softly.

  “It’s what I do, love. After all, I’m the original goddess.” And before Xurir could reply, Crystal was gone.

  She re-appeared in the heart of the galaxy, floating above the supermassive black hole at the center. All right. She cracked her knuckles. Let's make this happen.

  There was no presence pushing back against her, but the corruption itself was still there. She could feel it, slick and grimy on the very substance of everything, a puddle of oil floating on top of a still pond.

  Crystal took a deep breath and started with the most visible sign of the corruption: the tendrils of gas that spread between the stars and across the galaxy. She willed them to be attracted to the nearest black hole, turning singularities into giant vacuum cleaners for that particular foulness. It would take centuries, but over those centuries all that corruption would be gathered into single points and trapped behind event horizons.

  Now. The stars. The corruption had worked its way into the fundamental processes of her nanoverse, and solar cores, when they fused elements together and released energy, were also releasing corruption. That she couldn’t just undo, but she could reset the clock, and trust her demigods to contain it in the future.

  Crystal began to rotate her hand, like the way she twisted in the Core universe, but on a galactic scale. In response to her rotation, the stars started to shed their corruption in large waves. This had to be done delicately. If she spun a star too fast or pulled off too much stellar matter, she could destroy all life around it. No rush. You can spend a millennium or two here and barely miss anything in the Core. Take care of your people.

  It took a century of delicate manipulations to pull all the corruption out of existing stars and hurl it into the interstellar clouds, where the black holes would devour it. Empires rose, and entire cultures stared in wonder as their suns changed color and began to shed natural, wholesome light. Philosophers debated the meaning. Scientists tried to come up with theories to explain the phenomena. Religions claimed it was the end times, or the beginning of the new times, or just a mysterious act of God in His ineffable ways. One religion on a world on the far end of the galaxy decided it meant they were all dying and that this new universe would be paradise.

  And then the monsters started to die.

  It was a trick Crystal had missed when she was trying to fix her nanoverse before. The monsters kept returning because they fed upon the corruption the same way plants feed off sunlight. Without their primary energy source, the massive flora and fauna that had devoured civilizations were withering and falling over dead.

  This sparked another wave of philosophical, religious, and scientific debate, three minor wars and one major one, seven different cultural heroes who claimed to be behind the slaughter, and several unusual new belief systems.

  The most interesting was a chain of events surrounding the possible divinity of pear trees. This was a world that the corrupt goddesses had never gotten around to visiting personally, so the people were free to create their own mythology, and they had decided that the man-eating monsters that terrorized their towns and farms must be gods dispensing justice to the unholy. Over the centuries, someone noticed that the “gods” were particularly fond of pears. From that, the clergy of this faith had developed three central tenets: thou shalt not consume the food of the gods; thou shalt give generously to the work of the gods; and if thou art consumed, then all shall know thee as a heretic. It had worked out very well for the clergy, who did a brisk business selling indulgences and crying heresy any time someone got eaten anyway.

  When the gods began to die, the panicked clergy spun a story about a foul heretic plot to corrupt and poison the food of the gods, and the emperor declared war on heretics and pear trees. Since no one knew which heretics were responsible, they concentrated on the trees. Armies were mustered, and the formerly sacred groves were burned to the ground. This would have resulted in the extinction of the pear if not for an unlikely series of circumstances involving a bird, an unusually large pear, gravity, and the emperor’s skull. Upon his death, the new emperor sued the pear trees for peace.

  The trees, being plants, never responded.

  The empire collapsed after a series of rebellions, primarily centered on the debate over whether pear trees were divinely good or the source of all evil.

  On Shadoth, Xurir had spent the last century teaching the truth of the changes. He had felt the change happening and looked up just in time to watch his sun turn yellow, the light transitioning from gangrenous to warm and welcoming. “Thank you,” Xurir said, to empty air, wondering if Crystal could hear him.

  In space, only dimly aware of the impact her changes had wrought, Crystal looked over her new creation. She saw stars in red and yellow and blue and white, spotted with a few black holes, and she saw that it was good.

  She ran her hands through her hair only to discover that, over the century, it had grown sixty feet long and wreathed around her in zero gravity like a raven halo. She decided to keep it as she flew towards the next task on her list.

  This star system had a gas giant in the habitable zone, orbited by four airless moons. With a snap of her fingers, Crystal gave one of them an atmosphere and magnetosphere and oceans, and accelerated evolution to give her life to work with. She included some fossils for them to discover, so they wouldn’t believe they had been snapped into existence by divine power, even though technically that was true. The people that emerged on this world looked like massive scorpions with fleshy hands in place of pincers, and Crystal scattered holoverses for them to find. The first one to find the holoverse of each era would know, instinctively, what had to happen and why. Let’s spare them the headache you had convincing people, yeah?

  Then it was on to the next uninhabited star. And the next.

&nb
sp; It would take Crystal another thousand years to populate her nanoverse and spread more holoverses within it. The squid-like Chold, the giants of Xa’nati, the warring hive minds whose name was expressed in the Scent of Flowers in Rain, the minuscule people whose mathematical language called their world “force equals mass times acceleration”...to all of them Crystal spread her holoverses and her warnings. It wouldn’t keep forever – one by one the worlds would fail, and just like stars went supernova in the Core, stars here would become corrupt. She would trust her demigods to postpone it long enough for the universe to host life until it usually would have fallen to entropy. It gave them, and her, time.

  And for now, time was all they needed.

  Chapter 23

  No Rest for the Divine

  “The end of the world,” Jacqueline marveled. “The actual end of the world. I’m in an extra-dimensional Greek temple talking about the imminent end of the world. I feel like I’ve stumbled into a summer blockbuster.”

  “Welcome to the circus,” Isabel said.

  Jacqueline glanced at Ryan, lying unconscious on a bed in the corner. “When do you think he’s going to wake up?”

  “Probably soon. He woke up pretty quickly when he got half his face torn off, so I don’t think this will take too long.”

  “That’s crazy,” Jacqueline shook her head and sighed. “So when are you getting out of the circus?”

  “I’m not,” Isabel said. “I’m scared sick half the time, and the other half I’ve gone up to scared out of my mind, but I’m sticking.”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  Isabel almost laughed, remembering all the other times Jacqueline had said that to her. When she wanted to die her hair purple, when she wanted to audition for American Idol, when she wanted to sneak off and take a bus to Florida for spring break...that line has always been the starting point for an “I’m not your sister, but” kind of talk. For seven years, Jacqueline had been like a part of their family, and Isabel knew those talks had helped keep her out of a lot of trouble.