by Davi Cao
“OK, that sounds like a plan, a good one, somebody with experience helping us out. And do you happen to have any idea of where can we find this ... this liquid-space Creator?”
“Can you craft a Creator detector in this world?”
“No.”
“Neither can I, I guess. So, we just have to look for one, don’t we? Don't worry, they're not rare. Most worlds aren't physical like yours or mine, are they? They're stranger,” OOOO said with a big smile.
Walking posed no stress to Colin's immortal joints, his only burden that of standing intact while the world's landmarks disappeared one by one, mountains, buildings, roads, everything. Without a sun, even north and south became meaningless directions. Without signaling, what little remained of roads and highways served no purpose. Going to old New York would take forever.
“It's hard to think of friendship with alien creatures, you know. And if Mae is human, and if she spent time with you, then, well, that's something to think about. Tell me, how did you meet her?” Colin asked, kicking the mud under his feet with the calmness of a slow walker.
“The same way I met you! By chance, wasn’t it? Creators are many in the realm of existence, and it's not hard to find others. It's also easy to become friends when you're immortal, isn't it?” OOOO said.
“I hope so. The more I wait, the more I forget about my old life, about the people I knew, about how good everything was. It's lonely to forget, you know? And even though living here is terrible, I'm confused. I’m never hungry or tired anymore, like you said I wouldn’t be. Besides, I'm not afraid. When I come to think of it, it's quite comforting.”
“The life of a Creator is amazing, isn’t it?”
“Maybe, but I don’t want to forget. I still had so much to do back there, so many things I didn't do out of fear. It all looks so silly to me now, and yet, if I got back, I'm not sure I'd act another way. I don’t trust my feelings anymore, that's the thing. They tell me I should focus on now and enjoy my stay, but that’s wrong. That’s the same as saying that I’m ok with mass murder.”
“They were just creations, weren’t they? That’s not mass murder. That’s like tearing a piece of paper to try another one, isn't it?”
“No, that’s still wrong. They were living beings like me. If letting me die is bad, killing them is equally bad.”
On the top of the hill they had just reached, OOOO laid itself on the floor, its legs spread sideways. It studied the toboggan run ahead and rolled down. The spin of its body threw melted matter in the vacuum of space above, a vortex of mud propelled by amusement in its simplest form.
OOOO fell in a thick pool of ooze, from which the creature raised intact, waiting for Colin’s arrival. To its surprise, the human came right behind, rolling at high speed, and then tumbling madly. Were Colin still mortal, he’d break many of his bones with the fall.
OOOO hopped out of the mud pool, carrying his friend with one bent member. They walked on, at peace with their mutual need for distractions in their immortality.
“Mae and I used to live in an apartment together, did you know that?” OOOO said.
“Of course I didn’t. Could people see you, then? I mean, if you could rent an apartment—” Colin said.
“No, in Terra we couldn’t interact directly with creations, we were in separate dimensions. But we could watch them and create other things that affected their world, couldn’t we? Yes, and that’s what we did!”
“Hm, I guess that explains a lot. You were the gods surrounding us, the real ones. And yet, there you were, living in a city, all around us. Why did you choose an apartment? It makes no sense for a god to do so.”
“Oh, Mae was fascinated by the architecture in your world! Humans from other worlds don’t always build things, you know that? Sometimes there are no predators, sometimes they live in utopias, which are the most boring worlds of all, sometimes they fear their own intelligence and sometimes they simply enjoy dying. But in Terra, Mae created an interesting balance between need and creativity that amazed us all at first, didn't she?”
“Yes, it was a very good balance, I agree wholeheartedly! See, we were very creative, we should never have perished the way we did. I can't speak for myself, because I know I didn't count for much, but I knew some amazing people that—”
“Yeah, yeah, do you want to know what Mae liked to do more than anything, by the way?” OOOO said, ignoring Colin’s never-ending resentment.
“Please!”
“Preaching at her cults!” It widened its big eyes, waiting for Colin’s admission of the awesomeness of that.
“No wonder. Was she the one people in the West used to call God, by chance? That would make perfect sense, so I'm not surprised. We had a Creator behind our backs, in the end.”
“Not exactly, was it? That God you speak about was a myriad of other Creators, all having fun at their turns. Mae had a very small cult, very restricted to bank cleaners, you see?”
“Bank cleaners? Only them?” Colin clenched his eyelids, suspicious of the idea.
“Exclusively them! She sent messages to a guy that spoke to others about the correct alignment of desk papers in the healing of illness, didn't she? Yes, banks were their temples, and each room needed to have piles of papers oriented in certain ways, and if all was correctly positioned, they could heal anybody who held a broom and wore a cap in a particular place,” OOOO said.
Colin laughed, “I'm sorry, I can't believe it, that's too silly to be legit. You seemed so blunt and honest until now that I forgot you could lie to me as well. Is this part of the Creator's act, you know, coming up with stories? Yes, of course it is, Creators create, right, why am I asking—”
“We are Creators. We don’t lie, do we? I'm not making this up. It was a very small cult, and it was kept secret, wasn't it? You'd only hear about it if you were a bank cleaner who accepted the one set of essential truths.”
“Which were ...?”
“I have no idea. It didn’t interest me so much, and Mae herself got bored by it later, didn't she? She then became more fascinated by the negation of things, you see?”
“Hard to imagine it. We had so much to do in that planet, not to talk about the universe itself, that I can't see anybody getting bored with Terra.”
“And yet they did, didn’t they? Even creations themselves died of boredom. We always tried to push you guys around and see how you would react to certain things, but in the end, it became repetitive, didn't it?”
“That’s not right. We were still plugging everything into the Internet, we finally had electric cars becoming popular, we had the first real successes in reusable space flight, and even artificial intelligence was advancing at a good pace! The future was bright, and how can that be boring?”
“Well, it was uninteresting enough that Mae herself thought about the giving up of your precious Terra, wasn’t it?”
“I disagree, I'm sorry, I do. I think you are all wrong, you and the rest of your Creators, if that's what you really think.” Colin shook his head with vehemence. “I can't speak for Mae, but if she's my Creator, and if she saw my world the way I did, I think I need to hear her first before believing in you.”
“We are in the same boat, fellow Creator! And I loved your original world, didn’t I tell you that? In fact, I tried to make it more interesting before deciding to take it from Mae,” OOOO said.
“You? Out of all Creators, the destroyer of Terra, wanted to save it?”
“Not save it. Just make it more interesting! To me and all the others, you see? Whenever you had a small, backwater country doing new weapons tests, that was me! Whenever you had a holy person expressing joy with the killing of others, that was me! And I was also the one pushing the people angry at those holy people against their sects. Why, do you ask me?”
“Yes, why? Were you the devil?”
“Ah, sometimes! But I don’t like all that evil versus good mythology that you were so fond of, do I? No, it was interesting to a point, but then it became
too repetitive and predictable. I did it all to raise the stakes! To sow conflict, right?”
“Right. We never had a chance, then.”
“At what?”
“At peace.”
“You had, of course, because peace can be interesting too, can’t it? Most worlds know no war or predation, if you want to know. I just paid attention to what you seemed to care about and pushed things to go one way or another, you see? It was like painting with the materials at my disposal, wasn’t it?”
“And did it help? I mean, did you make the world more interesting to Mae ... to our creator?”
“Sort of. She laughed at what I did, didn’t she? And she tried to come up with new cults. In the end, though, she was tired of history repeating itself in Terra, and knew that humans in that world would be all dead in just a few decades by their own doing anyway—” OOOO said.
“Wait, wait, wait. What are you talking about? Is it war or something, or did she have a scheduled apocalypse of some sort for us? Because if you're talking about war, I don’t think that would be possible, because the world headed towards union more than ever.”
“Ha, you all walked on a mine field, didn’t you? I don’t think you understand the danger you were in.”
“That’s not true! There were dangers, of course, but we would overcome any challenge ahead of us, I’m sure we would. Besides, if the end was so imminent, why didn’t you wait until we all died by ourselves instead of killing us all? Wouldn’t you have fun watching us disappear?”
“What’s the fun of watching something you already know the end of? I want surprises, don’t I?”
“We would surprise you!”
“No, you wouldn’t. A liquid-time Creator told me how Terra would end, and that was exactly like I saw it. So, it became boring, didn’t it?”
“Oh, yeah? Then how was it going to end?”
“You can guess it, can’t you? Just give it a shot!” OOOO said.
“Nuclear attacks?”
“No.”
“Some sort of new disease?”
“No.”
“Hm. Weather change? I don’t think it could kill every human, but sometimes it seemed a pretty apocalyptic event at the time, with all the talk about life extinction and all that.”
“You got that right. And yes, everybody would die eventually, wouldn’t they? See, it was so predictable that even you could see that.”
“That’s open to debate!”
“I don’t see how, do I? Your world is already gone!”
“And we’ll never know if you were right or not, unless we have Terra back.”
“If you have your world back and you don’t change it in any way, then your fate will be nearly the same, won’t it?”
“Let’s see ... We can only find it out when we get someone who can help me to reinstate Terra. Right? We wouldn't let the world end by our doing. I'll show you how wrong you are.”
“Are you really going to have it just the way it was?” OOOO asked, as they walked on deserted land, round hills taking over the horizon.
“Of course! All life in there must have a second chance. And you have to learn to respect your creations. They are more than a mere piece of paper,” Colin said.
“People are more interesting than lifeless materials, of course, but only if you are a human yourself, you see?”
“Well, I don't see the point of this argument. I'm talking about life, and yes, I know certain things are only important to me because I'm human, just like others matter more to other animals. And I want to help them too, I want all lifeforms back. That fixes things for everybody, right? Are there, by any chance, Creators that are not living beings like me?”
“There are, aren't there? We should look for KIII, you’ll love it! It’s a mountain who’s a Creator! Amazing, isn’t it? It doesn’t have a name on its own, so I gave it one, KIII, and it’s quite an unusual one. We have Creators made of light, others made of void, others who express no will at all. To them, humans are really boring, you see?”
“OK, then show me these other Creators. And help me find one that can take me to New York instantly, like you said.”
“We’re looking for them, aren’t we? What’s the rush? We will find them. As long as we keep looking, you don’t wish to meltdown, do you?” OOOO approached Colin with its fast legs, enclosing him.
“I don’t want to disappear. Not right now. That Voice, that thing you created? It makes me feel bad. I don’t want to get near it again.”
“Me neither! It’s too powerful, isn’t it?”
“Too much, yes. Did you really have to create such a monster to remove Mae’s world?”
“The World Voice was just a little push, you see? She was already bored with Terra, but didn’t want to see it go. And we can only become the dominant Creator if the former one decides to abdicate, so I had to convince her to let go of it, didn't I? And to do so, what did I do?”
“You made her feel miserable and alone, worthless of any attention. You made her want to disappear, to leave that awful world. I know how it feels. Couldn’t she resist it, though? If you were her friend, she should have known what you would do.”
“That wasn’t important, wasn’t it? If she became so affected by the World Voice, it was because the Voice spoke the truth, somehow.”
“It ... it did. But to her too?”
“Creators are sensitive beings, aren’t they? Well, usually we are.”
“That’s the opposite of what I always thought a bunch of immortals would be like,” Colin said.
“Interesting! How did you think we would be?” OOOO asked.
“Either fighting all the time or indifferent to everything.”
“Fighting? What for? We will never die! We don’t need things, do we?”
“I know, but that would be the case if there were mortals around, I thought.”
“Maybe, just for fun. And indifferent? Yes, that could happen, couldn’t it? That’s why we create!”
“You create because you have nothing else to do. Is that it?”
“Yes!”
“And you get bored when the world doesn’t suit your expectations?”
“No! It’s only when it brings us nothing new.”
“I don’t think I could ever get tired of Terra.”
“That’s because so far that’s the only world you know of, isn’t it?”
“I see your world too. And I’m not impressed ...” Colin said.
“You are not? But it’s a World Voice! Look at how majestic it is! Please, you must see the whole picture, it’s a world inhabited by just one living being, a human mind trapped in an incorporeal existence! That’s so funny, isn’t it? You have to admit that, come on, please!” OOOO pulled Colin by the arm to make him look at the glowing pillar of light, far away on the horizon.
Colin looked, laughing at OOOO’s frustration with his distaste for its creation. Over the ruins of a public square on a small hill, a light shone with the pretense of a small sun. It hit Colin with intensity, confusing him. A light, something banal, so abundant in old Terra, still working after so much destruction! Whatever lay behind it, he had to see for himself.
Colin calmly pushed OOOO to the side, keeping his eyes fixed in the distance, and ran towards the small point of light that lured him in the middle of a half-melted park.
∙ 10 ∙ Some company to pass the time
A light like no other he had ever seen. Its emitted rays reached Colin’s retina and gave him the impression of looking at pure energy. A small point kept small no matter how close he got to it, changing its rays' geometry and nothing else. They danced around its emitter, bending in waves and ripples, the surface of a gas giant replicated on a tiny scale.
The light shone in a flat plateau by the side of half melted park benches and a theater. It diminished as Colin approached it, keeping the same absolute size constantly. Larger shapes grew behind it, the first clues of his increasing proximity to its source.
“Your search
is over now, isn’t it?” OOOO said.
“Did you see Mae in there?” Colin said, touching the creature’s tissues around the neck as if patting on a friend’s shoulder.
“Not Mae, but something equally interesting!”
Dark silhouettes made a circle in the light emitter's company. Three different figures of a nature Colin couldn’t identify stood together, all fixed in place, moving their upper parts. The shining light adopted the size of a human head, and then of an eye, the closer Colin got from it.
“It’s finally here, my dears! OOOO, hello there!” a new voice said.
“We had to start without you, and of course you don’t mind,” another one said.
“I don’t mind at all, do I? I had interesting times so far!” OOOO said.
“Do you want to play now or later? And who’s this one with you? I don’t remember meeting him before.”
“This is our newest Creator! He is the offspring of Terra!”
“My name is Colin—”
“Oh, I don’t like names, and none of us here have them. But I like you! Welcome to life, and come play with us,” one of the others said.
Colin began to identify them by their immediate characteristics, a group with such clear distinctions among themselves that having names wouldn't in fact matter much. The light he had seen from far away represented a small shining point in the body of a slender creature which had four thin tubes falling from its round and soft bulk. Its body had the crackled skin of an elephant, its head taken by the point of light. It hovered above the ground, using the side tubes to drive it in all directions,
“Actually, I do have a charming name,” the light Creator said. “You can call me --J--”
“J?” Colin asked.
“Not quite. It’s --J--. You need to wait sweetly before and after saying it. Nothingness is part of everything to me.”
Only one of them didn’t talk to the newcomers, a bulky, cubic Creator, whose only details looked like bas-relief on a big marble block. The pictures sculpted on its six faces shifted from reflective red to opaque dark, its shapes changing all the time, imprecise to human eyes. It had a voice and manipulated objects, though, as Colin soon found out: