by Davi Cao
OOOO’s digging creatures formed a huge pit. The deeper it got, the more creatures needed to be created, because the building’s debris melted and started to refill the valley. The telepath spoke to OOOO in conversations that entertained it and fixed an amused stare in its face. Colin backed away from the crater’s rim as it got bigger, until a vivid yellow dot showed up at the bottom.
“I see that the world is still ugly,” the new Creator said.
“Can you move? We’re coming for you, aren’t we?” OOOO said.
“Mind-reader, do you have a name?” Colin asked, joining OOOO’s descent with lazy steps downhill.
“I don’t need names. Call me Bibi if you want to, but I chose it at random right now.”
“You look pretty, don’t you?” OOOO said, seeing Bibi for the first time, at a distance, with any detail.
“I am. Didn’t you believe me? One cannot afford to be ugly when its inner world transcends the physical one.”
“Are we going to enter its world like we did with KIII?” Colin asked OOOO.
“You won’t! Don’t you dare compare me to KIII! It is a brute one, ugly, very ugly, devoid of delicacy, deficient in awareness. It can hardly control itself, how can you say it’s anything like me? Look at me, just look at me!”
They arrived at Bibi and didn’t find a body to drag. A yellow kite with delicate ribbons floated on a blue mist, but its image refracted and reflected light, a prism bending rays, scattering them all over. Colin approached the Creator and tried to touch it, to make sure that he interacted with an actual physical thing.
“You’re an illusion,” he said.
“The body is an illusion, although it is here. Existence is conscience and merely that. I won the battle against the world, I alone. It’s amazing to admire me, I know. Take your time.”
“Interesting ... Very, very interesting, yes ... I see ... Don’t you see?” OOOO said to Colin.
“Let’s get out of here before we get stuck. Will you come with us or are you happy enough to let us see you for a moment?” Colin said.
“I will go with you, of course. You’ll benefit from it. But why don’t you say anything about me? Aren’t you glad to meet me? I can take a peek at your mind, you know that.”
“That’s unfair. Stop that, please,” Colin climbed the crater in front of the others.
“You don’t need to hide anything, do you? I like deep thoughts!” OOOO said.
“Are you aware of his Angeline?” Bibi said.
“I do! I do! Ha! That’s his human love, isn’t it?” OOOO stared at Colin’s angry face in amusement.
“It is. An ugly person, even for a human, if you—”
“Everything is ugly, except for you, isn’t it? The amazing Creator, the delight to the eyes!” Colin said.
“I don’t like physical things. I prefer the other varieties of existence, if you wish to know.”
“Don’t you have a body? You exist as a physical thing too.”
“Unfortunately, that’s true. I tried to get rid of it, I did all I could. If my world hadn’t ended right when it did ... Anyway, it’s a complex issue. Much like your contradiction,” Bibi said.
“His contradiction? Please tell more, you see?” OOOO said.
“No, it won’t say anything. It must respect one’s privacy,” Colin said.
“Foolish talk. Creators have no privacy. His contradiction is that he is an inept person who spent his life without ever showing any creative talent, and he ended up being Terra’s Creator. I can see your fear of creating things here. You’re afraid your ideas will be too stupid and that we will laugh at you.”
“We will laugh, won’t we, but—” OOOO said.
“Could you please shut up and stay away from my thoughts? I didn’t give you the permission to do that to me,” Colin said.
“Do you want me to close my eyes to talk to you? How rude! You fear us, I see that. We’re not humans, remember. Looking at your soul is the same as looking at your face. Is that forbidden too?” Bibi said.
“It’s different. I can hide my thoughts with my body.”
“What a waste. See, the body is the enemy, I always say this. I know why you want Terra back.”
“I know why too, don’t I?” OOOO said.
“Yes, it’s not a secret, stop boasting,” Colin said.
“You want it because you never had real friends. And you don’t accept us as friends,” Bibi said.
They got to the crater’s rim. From there on the flowing matter led them down at ease, descending towards the melted city like lost wanderers. OOOO stared at Colin with the only sad face it could do, getting closer to Bibi to check its body, to see if it served as good material for fitting in. It didn't.
“If you’re so into my mind, why don’t you answer me the one question I want to know from you, huh?” Colin said.
“Because I’d get there eventually. First, I wanted you to admit my beauty which you still didn’t do,” Bibi said.
“How can you not say it is so? It’s interesting, isn’t it? Few Creators are of its kind,” OOOO said.
“You’re vain and rude. That’s not beauty to me.”
“Rude? I’m sorry for that. I don’t see it the same way as you do. What I want you to admit is that your body is your enemy. It makes you hide yourself. And after so much hiding, look at what is left of you. A slave of your regrets, an ambulant fear. So what if your ideas are stupid? You won’t be alone because of that. You’ll be useless if you hide, only then. If you spoil something or contribute with idiotic contraptions, at least you’ll make us laugh. Admit it, then.”
“Admit what?”
“That your body is your prison. That you’re immortal now, and our kind has the natural duty of creating things. You can transform the world around you and heal—”
“Just tell me where Mae is, ok? Let me deal with my life, I don’t want your intrusion. When I get my world back, I can heal and change,” Colin said.
“I see,” Bibi said, patting OOOO’s mind with a request for compassion. “She’s exiled. You won’t be able to find her anywhere.”
“You know where she is. You’re a mind reader, and you don't respect intimacy. You can read her mind from here, can’t you?”
“I do, but she doesn’t want to be found, and I respect that. Maybe in her time alone she can also work on getting rid of her body. I’m supportive of that.”
Colin stopped walking. His face shone with the glow coming from the World Voice’s pillar. Although still far, it wandered closer than ever since their arrival in New York. Voices haunted him, either from the telepath, either from the monster that melted the world. Only from the content of each could he differentiate between torments.
“Everything I do is worthless ... Nobody likes me ... They forgot about me, all of them ... Is it all my fault?”
“How can I find her?” Colin said.
“You can’t. You must live with that. If you want your world back, you’ll be on your own,” Bibi said.
“OOOO, you’re with me, aren’t you?”
“I am, am I not? Yes, yes, it will be fun to see you living in my world!” it said.
“We’ll have to make some noise. Maybe this way, instead of us going to find her, she will come to find us,” Colin said.
“You have a plan, I see. I congratulate you, because I believe you’re choosing the right way. You just don’t seem to realize it yet,” Bibi said.
“You are ready to create more things and change the world, aren’t you? That will be very interesting!” OOOO said.
“Yes, yes, I will change it all. I’ll bring my world into yours,” Colin stared at OOOO, mimicking the creature’s amused smile.
∙ 15 ∙ The good wall
The World Voice’s wanderings disturbed him, but Colin learned to flee from it with OOOO, running away unaffected. He had a particular spot set up for his reconstruction plans, and even though it melted continuously, he got better at every new attempt. At first, OOOO helped him
the same way he had done with Crisalid.
“You can see a tree in your mind, can’t you? It grows so fast that its skin becomes cracked bark and then melts. It is thick, flowing all the time, but the joy inside it is always renewing itself. It enjoys watching things melt, even if it is just its own body. Give it some leaves that sprout the same way,” it said.
Colin wished for it, and trees showed up. They survived for a long time, its leaves melting so fast that he called them rain-trees. The World Voice swept the area. Colin and OOOO responded with a fast escape.
Once back, the new species stood in stasis, nearly dead, and solid. He hugged the biggest of them, a rigid body the size of a house, a rare solid thing in that muddy world. He showered under the abundant flow of melted matter falling from the branches above.
“These are not the kind of trees you expected, are they?” OOOO laughed at them.
“Please don’t mock them,” Colin said.
“Why not? They are something else, they are not anything close to Terra’s trees, and you should—”
“That’s the best I can do, ok? Give me a break.”
”—and you should appreciate this fact, shouldn’t you?”
In an effort of imagination, Colin created one entire street. It had houses and two-story buildings, trees, and lampposts. He walked on it ahead of OOOO, to feel like going home again. The great pillar of glowing light loomed in the horizon, haunting the world alone, irradiating sadness that already worked on every wall and foliage of his creations.
“Let it melt. I’ll do it again,” he said.
“Why not trying something different?” OOOO said.
“Because I want Terra and nothing more. I need to get as close to it as I can.”
“Still, you’ll need to craft walls that don’t melt, won’t you?”
“Yes. The thing is, I have no idea of where to begin with that. A structure of Crisalid's kind will look terrible as a building.”
“I say it will look fun. A swimming pool of sad skin, right?”
He imagined Terra’s strongest materials and alloys, and all of them became fluid after just a few hours. In that world, atomic structure transformed itself, replaced by an unknown force of nature. A product of the strange interaction between the World Voice’s sadness and all else’s will to exist.
A propaganda wall, why not? He wished for it, and it materialized. A hollow block of green, the color of hope, as tall as a giant statue. It rose at the end of the street just created by Colin, and it propagated a puzzling message: the world will get better after they die, so they should live to see it.
At first, the wall's paradox hit every single atom of matter with doubt, rendering them undecided. They suffered from depression and wanted to disappear, however they also became intrigued to see what would come later. Matter froze all around the block, giving Colin and OOOO a good moment of stability.
They sat at a front porch, close to the propaganda wall, on a wicker bench that reminded Colin of his grandparent’s house. OOOO followed him out of habit, because it didn’t understand the act of sitting, and it marveled at its friend’s efforts to recreate his land in a hostile world.
“Haha, look at that! You can already see cities made of that block’s concept, can’t you?” it said.
“Do you think it would work? I still doubt it,” Colin said.
“Why? It is not impossible to find a solution in here, is it?”
“So far, that’s something I can’t prove. Everything I do fails.”
“That’s so interesting, isn’t it? It is a mark of your personality.”
“Good way of pointing that out. If people admired this, I’d be a big success back in my old life.”
“You were a success, weren’t you?”
“Not at all. Bibi told you all you had to know about me.”
“It was too little. I’m curious to know more, you see? Why must your new creations be so like your original world?”
“Everything is interesting to you, so why can't my creations be the same? Aren’t you the one who's never bored with anything?” Colin said.
“No, I know too many boring things, don’t I? You could become boring too, don’t worry. Right now, though, that’s not the case, is it?” OOOO said.
“Alright. Somehow, that makes me feel more comfortable. Look, you know I want my life back therefore my creations must be perfect. This is the only way I can have the exact same life. After that, maybe I can redeem myself with the others.”
“You want to create the same to live differently, don’t you?”
“Hm, something like that. I don’t know if I’d do things another way. I have all the power I could ever dream of, and, well, I don’t like it. It can’t give me other people to admire me. It can’t give me somebody I can love.”
“You can love me! And I admire you, don’t I?” OOOO said, fitting in.
“I know, but you’re not human. You work in such a strange way that ... that it’s just not the same. If I am worthy for some reason, only my equals can tell me.”
The hollow block of propaganda-emitting matter resisted even the World Voice’s sweeping passage. It bombarded the world with misery, and down there a pitiful box said that it would die. But, that it would be nice later, so perhaps it should stay and see how it would be.
From that experience, Colin used the same material to craft his first super strong house, where he crafted all parts of its structure with the same principles in mind.
Windows presented the biggest challenge, their transparent glass serving as a bridge between the outside and the inside, distressed by being in the middle of such a huge confrontation. They melted down fast, taking along their supporting frames. The world having no wind or insects, the lack of glass became an acceptable concession, thought Colin.
“Do you intend to live here?” OOOO said.
“I would like to. It makes no sense, though, does it?” Colin said.
“It doesn’t. You don’t need to rest, do you? You won’t die, you won’t have anything to store. A house is useless, isn’t it?”
“In my case, yes, and I don’t mind that. My purpose is to rebuild as much of Terra as I can in here, so that Mae can see it and come to me.”
“Why don’t you bring someone to live with you? Eventually you’ll have to create humans too, won’t you?”
“They will die in here—”
“Maybe not! You can try to protect them, can’t you?” OOOO said.
“If you think I can do it, I can try.”
“You should try, shouldn’t you? After all, you need to have them so that you can feel worthy, isn't that so?”
The floor where they stood trembled. The house’s walls argued among its molecules. A voice from the outside world told them that they were useless and were locked in a trap, and a voice from the inside asked them to wait for after their death. The enigma wouldn’t hold its power for long.
“You loved Angeline, didn’t you?” OOOO asked.
“Well. Yes, I suppose you could guess that already. Do you know what I mean when I say love?” Colin said.
“I lived among humans, so I know it, don’t I? It’s an interesting feeling, and I like it. Why did you love her?”
“What a question! It’s not easy to talk about this, you know? She was nice to me, that was it. I once had to have surgery and stay away for a few weeks from work, and she was the only one who called me to ask how I was. She was also the only one to ever remember my name after our first introduction. She had patience with me, and gave me many chances to show that I can talk about new ideas too—”
“Tell me about your new ideas!”
“I can’t think of any, not for you. I did boring things back there, OOOO. Believe me I’m not the creative kind of guy. Not good at sports, not good at math, not good at art, not good at mechanical stuff, not good at dealing with people. So far, I can only deal with things that others already created. Arranging things, you know, managing projects. And it’s pretty borin
g, so I never have interesting things to say. Even so, Angeline understood me. Actually, I never was sure of it, because she was nice with everybody. But before everything melted down, she called me,” Colin faced OOOO's penetrating eyes, amused at its excited smile.
“And then? Tell me, what, what, what happened?” it asked.
“She called me and said that she loved me. So, you see, I wasn’t alone.”
“And you aren’t now either, are you?”
“Yes, I am.”
“Create her again! Even I want to meet her after that story,” OOOO said.
OOOO’s proposal delved the depths of absurdity, and yet it spoke deeply into Colin’s mind. He imagined her, he wanted her there, and if he wished so, she would show up in front of him. An Angeline crafted from his memories, from his most secret desires, so close to reality that he had to stop and wonder whether that would be the actual self or a mere copy. If he kept his thought focused too much on that image, he could slip and materialize it.
“She’ll die and melt like all else. I can’t do this to her,” he said.
“You can protect her, can’t you? How about a special suit?” OOOO said.
“Tell me how, because I don’t know. A space suit? It’s a vacuum in here, isn’t it? And the air melts down too.”
“I can’t contribute now. I’m too curious to know what you can do on your own, am I not?”
“It would be nice to have human company around here.”
“You want her, don’t you? Think of her and wish for it.”
Colin did as suggested, picturing Angeline’s strong face in his mind. Curly black hair down to her back, small red mouth and a square chin, blue blouse, and violet long skirt with brown boots. On top of all that, a protective layer of a material ready to negotiate with the world, prepared to serve as a therapist to the depressed matter around it. On her head, a glass helmet, so that she could see him and they could meet again.
She appeared in the middle of the empty house where they chatted, protected by propaganda walls, dressed to explore the moon, an astronaut from old Terra. Her protective outfit weighted heavily on her, making her crumble on the floor with knees bent sideways. Angeline lay down on her back, groping the firm ground with hands thickened by rigid gloves. She raised her arms and swung her body to the side, trying to turn around.