by Davi Cao
Colin froze his feet, greeting the slime with pursed lips. He gave the World Voice a free pass to his mind, letting its words fulfill their intention of utmost dominance. A muddy vine gripped his foot, and he watched it advance on him.
“Come to me ... Where are you? Why don’t you do something to reach me? You have stopped trying ... Don’t stop, please ... I beg you ... Have mercy on me, come meet me ... Anything is good, anything is better than silence ...”
Dalana’s last hop targeted Colin’s body, making him crumble under her. He released his foot from the ground, feeding the former soil of Earth, once so rich with nutrients and organic matter, with immortal flesh, matter to enrich the regolith and make it reach the sky and at last meet the new presence it sought so much.
Colin’s body lay on the ground, hugged to Dalana’s, enveloped in her wish for company, in the planet’s own desire for his substance and his mind.
She and the desert were all he needed to find his satisfaction, for he had found it, the new presence. It had come to him, it embraced him, it didn’t stop trying, it had mercy on him, and it won over the silence of loneliness. It was Dalana, the one who helped him exist, the one who bore the weight of disdain, for nobody valued her Utopias, the best person to have around precisely due to that.
Dalana was a privilege, she was a dream, and the time spent by her side meant his own time in Paradise, because he wouldn’t live longer, he didn’t have to, he wanted to become one with her and the ground, now that he had found the new presence, and so he could die in peace. It had to be the truth, he realized with a grin, that he had died with Earth, and Heaven was actually Hell, and that even in the worst of worlds he had help, he had someone to care for and to be cared for.
It was not Angeline, the whole time it was not Angeline that he needed. He loved her for her remembrance of him, for her initiative to be with him long enough to see what made him unique. But only Dalana shared his nature, the new presence that truly understood his new condition, and no part of the past could ever compete with Utopia.
Angeline represented the past, and the future was Utopia.
“I am here for you ... Won’t you come? It can’t be hard for you ... Speak, please, speak ... This silence is torturing me ... Am I too worthless for any word?”
They still stepped on Terra, the planet still carried its ruins, it still thrived upon Terra’s morphed matter. He fell as the last ruin, glad to bury his own body in his old home’s embrace, the entire planet being a grave for those like him, who lived to find others, who only saw meaning in life if shared.
In the end, they all looked for presences, for those willing to turn everything into Paradise, troubled by need, by dissatisfaction, by boredom, always so far away from Paradise that the idea itself, the motivation of their own existences, got mocked and laughed at. People buried themselves believing the world would never be different.
But Colin knew it could be different, now that he had Dalana, having lived with her long enough to see the power of Utopia on his fellow beings and on himself, and he prepared himself to die with her. Together, forever, inside the planet, inside old Terra’s corpse, sowing it with dreams of a better life and of helping others.
Ai.iA’s rods extended fully on the ground, its extremities blending with it whole. She couldn’t leave it anymore without breaking her own self, and her plain eyes lost their traces, paint fading under the sun. Her lower head accepted the encroaching mud, allowing herself to become one with the desert. Deep inside, the new presence satisfied her, and the path to sacrifice could stop no more.
Everything shared the world, in a twisted Utopia where individuals struggled to exist, victims of a creature whose voice dominated it. The dictatorship of a human mind detached from a corporeal existence, the sole being of a dimension unreachable by other creatures, who held the supreme power over every particle in existence. The World Voice ruled the land.
“Hey, you all, stop that, will you? Don’t, don’t die, please ... It’s just a world, isn’t it? I did it for fun ... Aren’t you having fun? No? Don’t give up on yourselves because of it, don’t do that,” OOOO said.
It wished for freedom from its prison of regolith, and an aura of total smoothness allowed it to slide up without attrition. It hopped towards the site where its friends lay on the ground, saddened by the awful state of their bodies. It first tried to budge Colin’s head, to make him look at its goggled eyes and its compressed mouth, its reunited teeth.
But his head fell heavier than usual, the weight of Dalana’s own brain adding to it, joined to it. Their ears became a mass of flesh that connected both skulls, having parts of their temporal bones mingled as well. To separate themselves, they had to want it, and they had no wish for that, now that they had found each other in their embrace with the planet, which swallowed their arms and legs.
Despaired, OOOO touched Ai.iA with two of its legs, pushing her hard to detach her from the ground, so that she could help in rescuing Colin and Dalana. It punched her so hard in one strike that one of her rods broke in half, leaving a part of it lost forever in the dry mud. Not only would OOOO be responsible for their deaths, it would also break them and torture them.
It saw Ai.iA’s dismembered body, Colin’s deformed bones bending towards Dalana. OOOO cried.
“Nobody is worse than me, nobody! I created myself, didn’t I? Myself haunting the planet, the pillar of one leg, the worst of its kind! I am worthless, how can I do this? I kill others, my friends even ... No, I’m not good, am I? Somebody, answer me ... Tell me that I am the worst, please ...” OOOO said.
It hopped away from the sacrificed Creators, unable to look at their lost bodies, seeing no way out of its guilt other than with its own damnation. It let the ground cover its body, craving for a new presence, for OOOO also wanted to find a new thing, only one new thing: its child.
“Come to me, my dear one, come meet the one who made you, who allowed you to be so terrible and to crush me. You were made to destroy, weren’t you? I am the destroyer! I made you so miserable, I laughed at every word you muttered in your torture, I wanted more of it. Didn’t I? And I am the one to pay the highest price for that, you see? I see. Find me, I’m here, waiting for you, waiting for reunion with my creature, so that we can end, at last.”
The giant pillar of glowing blue light sensed the call.
“You! I know where you are!”
It came sweeping fast the land towards OOOO, abandoning its chaotic errands to chase the message it didn’t hear, but felt. It was the call of the end, the trigger to its own dissolution, the most awaited moment in its eternal life. The World Voice rushed to meet its doom, and to bring it to the one who created it as such.
It left a trail of agitated land, eating and regurgitating on itself, rippling, spilling hungry matter to the desert all around. A hurricane, an earthquake, disfiguring the planet and scarring it with anxiety and closure. It neared the end.
The World Voice’s pillar stopped above OOOO’s buried body.
“I see now, I see you! You don’t have to speak, I see you! Take me out of here, so that we can both go!”
The ground enveloping OOOO dissolved in the pillar’s light, revealing spidery legs and a disheveled head ready for dissolution. It met the World Voice not with a smile, for it wasn’t happy. It gritted its teeth in satisfaction, finding the presence it wanted, paying the price of its mistake. A world wasn’t worth the life of one single Creator.
“Here, my creation, we found each other. Relieve me from my pain, and I’ll relieve yours,” OOOO thought, its mind melting down and blending with the mist of dimensions losing consistency in the fading world.
The World Voice shut up to feel the presence of another being in its immaterial embrace. It rejoiced at the reunion of its spectral matter with new things coming from another place. OOOO’s disembodied matter crossed the barriers between worlds and became one with its creation.
After long, they disappeared in the nothingness of the void.
∙ Epilogue ∙
For the first time since Terra’s demise, silence. Absolute silence. The planet lacked an atmosphere, and the Creators own conceptual means of communication found no message to convey. Sentient and nonsentient beings found peace, at last.
With the World Voice gone, they had access to themselves and themselves only. Matter in general, realizing it had nothing to suffer from, no source of energy to derive its existence, found itself at stake. At any time, it could just vanish, and either become something else, or forget about being something. The world returned to the void, anxious to hear the next noise.
One of Colin’s ears mingled with Dalana’s flesh. His urge for a new presence disappeared with the great pillar’s fading. Angeline, once again, sprouted in his mind, together with his family, his work mates, his favorite places. He wanted the old stuff, not the new one.
He trembled with the realization that a part of his body belonged to another being, something that made no sense, that disgusted him. The World Voice had warped his world view, and the results he’d reap from that would manifest in bruises and torn flesh.
With a series of strong pulls, Colin removed his body from Dalana’s, letting his skin fly and the cartilage of his ear spill on the solid ground. Wishing for his intact body, it materialized on himself.
Whole again, human, he saw Dalana recover by his side and got embarrassed about his exaggerated proximity with her. She looked down, sat on the ground, biting her lips. The front pocket in her yellow dress dangled in ripped fabric, her ear dripped in a mess of blood.
“Do you need help?” Colin asked.
“Maybe. Things are different now. What happens when we die?” She murmured to herself.
“The world changed, not us. It changed before we died,” he said. “Are you hurt? If I wish for it, can I heal your wounds?”
“I’m afraid not. I can do it myself, I just find it all too strange. The voice inside my mind is still anguished, but it’s not the World Voice anymore. That’s just me.” She looked up at Colin.
“We have to do something to help you, then. Now, I guess, danger is gone.”
“Maybe. We still have to face ourselves.”
She had eyes of curiosity, of one who waited for more questions so that she could open up and speak about life. Silence abandoned Colin to his own conscience, to his own petty fears and shame, though. He wouldn’t inquire her further.
Ai.iA babbled incomprehensible words behind them, spinning her upper head in the process of waking up. Her body got stuck in the ground, captured by her own rods which had become one with the mud. She needed help. Dalana healed herself, noticed Ai.iA’s broken limb, torn by OOOO, and crawled there to caress her friend and ask if she was alright.
“It’s mnn ... haha ... Fllaly, ave e!” Ai.iA said, trembling under the effort of speaking again.
“She’s lost a lot to the world,” Dalana said to Colin. “We can’t understand you. You’re hurt and disjointed; can you hear me? Recover, before anything else, ok? Think of how you are.”
“We could at least free her rods from the ground.” Colin knelt by her side.
Nine small laser shovels burned through the ground to release Ai.iA’s rods with big chunks of solid matter at their tips. She managed to move them, but not to walk, because her bottom limb, the one she used to walk, dissolved whole.
“I won! I’m the ... Dominant one! World mine now ... ready inhabit, my idea ...” Ai.iA said.
She needed time to get back to normal, and then, at last, the new world would come.
After losing all its ruins to the World Voice’s misery, the planet’s surface became a caricature of the moon. It reminded Colin of his old universe, despite the giant rocky pillars perforating the horizon. The new universe to come would arise from a nonhuman creature, and what would the world it created do to his only need?
“Will things still be interesting from now on?” Colin said to Dalana, crossing his arms, shaking his head. “Interesting ... isn’t it?” he murmured.
“I see what you mean,” she said, recognizing his true question. “It died because of us, while we thought it was amused at our suffering. This pain will haunt us forever.”
“I liked it a lot ... A lot. It was my friend, and I’ll miss it.” Colin's moistened eyes blinked in a row, distrusting his own impulses. “Creators shouldn’t disappear, never, OOOO was right. I want it back ... Can I wish for it?” He fought his urge to hug Dalana, to find comfort in her arms.
Silence tasted good. It gave flavor to mourning, to the sadness of loss. Dalana gave it to Colin, she stood by his side and waited for his cry. Ashamed of his tears, he turned his face the other way and tried to look up. The world had ended, once again, and the apocalypse never looked beautiful. Dalana dragged her index finger on Colin’s spine, in her strange way of calling his attention.
“We should check the humans. Who knows what may have happened to them. While Ai.iA recovers, we must get back to the lab,” she said.
“Uhum ... OK, OK, yeah, let’s do it.” Colin dried his face with the back of one hand.
He thought about a wheelbarrow and it materialized in front of him. He took Ai.iA from the ground, put her distorted body on the cart and began to push her towards the lab. The wheelbarrow’s handles held his grip with solidity, everything around them displayed rigidity, nothing gave the slightest sign of melting down or of trying to grab them.
A strong aluminum alloy rasped on his fingers, an object as perfect as any he could find on Terra, which would last as much as the world itself lasted. Grabbing a solid thing that he had created with the mere will of mind, Colin marveled at his power. The era of emotional matter, hopefully, was over.
The lab’s entrance, now the gate to a mud house, stood intact. They descended the stairs, helping Ai.iA begin to form words, to recreate her damaged rods. When they opened the door to the round table’s room, faint whispers assaulted their hearing.
“—please, oh Lord, take us to Heaven ...”
Dalana nodded to Colin, hopeful, and he smiled at her. Their plan had worked, Ai.iA’s idea succeeded.
In church, lying on the floor, one person had a neck coming out from her chest. Mat and Charlotte had become one, him blending his head in her chest, her blending her arms on his shoulders. His brain met her heart, her flesh met his bones, they looked for the new presence and formed a sculpture of human bodies, one inside the other, just one body, not thinking, not pumping blood. Dry, bloodless, dead.
Laura, Zach, and Amanda prayed with closed eyes. The angel had gone.
“I don’t know ... I am so ... so sorry,” Dalana said, disappearing in the darkness of her closed eyes. She stepped behind Laura to caress her shoulders. “The nightmare is over now, ok, it’s over, trust me. We’ll go to a better world, one where you can have everything you want.”
“Amen.” Laura opened her eyes and smiled at Colin. “Take us there, please. Staying here is ... Bad for us.”
“We’ll go together. Let’s just let Ai.iA get better, ok? I’ll be with you.” Dalana turned her face back at Mat and Charlotte’s bizarre corpse.
“I want to pray. Tell me when we are ready to go.” Laura groped Dalana’s hand.
To escape the world’s terror, the remaining humans closed in on themselves, denying their senses until they got the Utopia they deserved.
Dalana approached Ai.iA on Colin’s wheelbarrow to help her to get on the floor. Her body had recovered, intact after her fast therapy. The excitement of victory rejuvenated her motivation, propelling her to clarity in no time.
“The new world is mine, I’m ready to do it. It’s all in my mind, it’s going to be incredible!” Ai.iA said. “I am grateful to both of you, don’t forget that, as I am one who honors help. Colin, I know you want to have your world back, and I know how it feels. You’ll have to wait longer to have it your way, but I’ll grant you a space of your own in my world so that you can try to create what you need to be at peace. Don’t worry, I’ll make it i
nviting to human life,” she then turned at Dalana. “Dalana, I don’t know what you want, so you are free to do as you please. Whatever happens in my world, I’m just glad to be the dominant one, at last. You are a good helper. I will always remember you.”
Letting Ai.iA speak, in her moment of stardom, neither Colin nor Dalana dared interrup her ceremony. She moved her bottom rod, standing up again, able to hop around the room. She put her two thick rods in front of her upper head, and an oval seed of light showed up in the contact of her limbs. She marveled at it and planted it in the ground.
A wave of impact struck the minds of all Creators in existence, sweeping their thoughts with the one true certainty: a new world arose from Ai.iA’s mind.
Acute noises took over the walls, bittersweet tastes rose from the ground, rough surfaces screamed from outer space, fetid smells colored the air, rainbow lines penetrated their future. Senses scrambled as reality reshaped, dropping Colin in the chasm between worlds. Dazzled, he stumbled on himself, falling down, but down didn’t exist anymore, and so he fell and fell and fell, and when it didn’t make sense to keep falling, he stopped.
In front of him, everything disappeared, except for Dalana. She stared at him with a raised hand, not standing up, not sitting down, not lying down either, for shapes, lines and colors were no help to his perception. He intuited, and intuition served as his cane in the blind world.
He grabbed Dalana’s hand, he pushed her closer to him. That thing on his chest, that pulsing energy, that came from her heart, something he could feel, something he could relate to. She saved him again, his buoy in the realm of the vanishing universes.
He loved having her in his arms. And now that the World Voice disappeared, now that his mind was relieved from an eternal voice of depression and anguish, he loved even more to know that he could let her go anytime he wanted.