Worldshaper

by Edward Willett

  Is too close. And coming closer every minute. He took a deep breath. “Very well,” he said. “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”

  Shawna Keys scowled. “Very funny.”

  “It is not meant to be,” Karl said, though not with complete honesty. The instincts of the playwright he had once been still remained, when it came to conversation: subtlety, misdirection, sly humor, the occasional pun. It was perhaps a failing. Still, Ygrair seemed to find it amusing, and so he had never tried very hard to break himself of the habit of attempted wittiness. “Aside from the reference to God, whom you may or may not believe in . . . ?”

  “I’m agnostic.”

  Neither fish nor fowl. Karl inclined his head in acknowledgment. “Very well. All the same, the biblical verse is a useful place to begin. No matter how the original universe came about, it exists. Within it, by means natural or divine, rose intelligence. Within intelligence rose creativity, and eventually, an understanding of the process of creation. That, in turn, allowed for sub-creation.”

  “Wait, I know this,” Shawna said. “Tolkien, right? ‘Mythopoeia’?”

  The names meant nothing to Karl. After my time, he thought. “I do not understand the reference.”

  Shawna seemed shocked. “J.R.R. Tolkien?”

  Karl shrugged irritably. “I do not know the man.”

  “Um . . . he was a great writer of fantastic tales.”

  “Ah.” Karl tucked that information away, in case it every came up again, then plunged on. “Irrelevant. I am not talking about making up stories, though by that craft I once made my living. I am talking about the sub-creation of entire universes.” He paused. That wasn’t quite right. Damn it all, the girl should already know all this! “Pocket universes, at least,” he amended. “According to Ygrair, the apparent size of each is an illusion: the stars and planets in the night sky, in those worlds in which they appear, are mere set dressing—flimsily painted flats, in theatrical terms.”

  “You have yet to say anything to convince me you are not a crazy person,” Shawna said.

  Karl felt another surge of irritation. “My apologies. I am not used to having to explain this . . . most Shapers already know.” Why don’t you? He paused to collect his thoughts, then continued. “Within the original universe were born certain individuals with the innate ability to create these new worlds. All they lacked was knowledge of that ability—and, of course, the raw material.”

  He stopped again. Shawna was staring at him in clear disbelief. “‘Original universe’? That’s this one.”

  Karl sighed. “No. It is not.”

  A shadow fell across her face—literally, not metaphorically. Karl turned his head to look out the window. The bright morning sunlight in the street outside had suddenly dimmed. Time is running short, he thought.

  He returned his gaze to the young woman, and tried to put all the urgency he felt into his voice. “The storm that came before is coming again, and so are those who rode it. We must be gone before they arrive.”

  * * *

  Karl’s ominous statement hung in the air like an unpleasant smell. I had followed his glance at the window, and realized the clouds had moved in, just as they had before . . . whatever had happened had happened. He’s trying to hurry me, I thought. So I can’t think this through.

  But I was in no mood to be hurried, not by someone who still sounded like he was spouting bad science fiction. Even if the attackers came again, based on their last appearance they wouldn’t be here until noon. I looked back to him, folded my arms stubbornly, and sat back in my chair. “So, let me guess. You want me to believe that you’re one of these . . . sub-creators? That you can actually create your own universe?”

  For some reason, the question seemed to annoy him. “It does not matter whether I am one of them. What matters is that you are one of them. And a very powerful one, at that. You made this world, and this morning, when you were attacked, you remade it.”

  It’s not everyday someone tells you you’re the Creator, so it’s not surprising the conversation lagged for a few seconds while I stared at him, he stared back, and I tried to a) absorb what he was saying, and b) figure out how to respond. It was crazy, of course, absolutely nuts, and he was clearly just another delusional mutterer-to-himself like a dozen others I’d seen on the streets (although to be fair, some of them were business types wearing Greentooth headsets), except . . .

  Except something had happened to me that I couldn’t explain. Except I had seen my favorite coffee shop shot up by terrorists—one of whom had called me by name!—and my best friend murdered in front of me, and no one remembered it happening—no one but the crazy man in the crazy clothes now sitting, crazily enough, in my quiet pottery shop.

  Not only that, no one but Karl Yatsar remembered the dead had ever even existed. As far as people who had known her for years were concerned, as far as the selfies on my own phone were concerned, Aesha Tripathi, my best friend, had never lived. Even the man I thought I loved, who’d visited her home with me, had dinner and drinks with me and her, had no recollection of her at all.

  If I discounted Karl’s explanation, I could only see two possibilities: either I had gone crazy, or everyone else in the world had gone crazy. I didn’t like either of those. (I had no problem thinking Karl was crazy . . . but if he was, then either I or my friends had to be, too.)

  I needed a third possibility, one that did not require mental breakdowns, either mine or everyone else’s, to explain things. And Shakespearean Cowboy dude, crazy (I winced; there was that word again) as it seemed, was offering one.

  So . . . run with it and see where it takes you. “Then . . . what happened . . . you’re saying I did that.”

  He nodded.

  “How?”

  “You altered the world so that it appears to have moved backward three hours in time.”

  “Sure,” I said. “Let’s go with that.” Why not? Once you start believing the impossible, where do you stop? “But things are different. What’s happening now didn’t happen the first time.”

  “I said you have altered the world so it appears to have moved backward three hours in time. No one can truly reverse the flow of time. Not even Ygrair, in the world she has Shaped for herself. You did everything in your power to make what happened unhappen, but it did happen.”

  I rubbed my right temple. The headache was worsening. “I don’t understand.”

  Karl looked out the window. The sunshine had not returned. He turned back to me. “Tell me this. Just before the world rewrote itself, what were you thinking? What were you feeling?”

  I thought back. “Terror. Anger. Disbelief.” I saw Aesha dying in front of me again, and swallowed hard. “I couldn’t believe it was happening. I said it out loud: ‘This isn’t happening. This isn’t happening!’”

  “And then it wasn’t?”

  I nodded. “And then it wasn’t.”

  Karl spread his hands. “There you are. Through your power, fueled by your terror and anger and disbelief, you rewrote reality with your words.”

  “You’re telling me I’m God.”

  He shook his head. “No. As I told you, there is a greater reality within which this world exists—the original universe, the real reality, what Ygrair calls the First World. If there is a God, then that is the world He created.” He paused. “Well,” he added, thoughtfully, “I suppose it is possible that what we think is the First World is itself only a sub-reality of an even greater reality. Though Ygrair says not.”

  “Turtles all the way down,” I muttered.

  Yatsar actually smiled at that. “Well put.”

  I chewed my lip for a moment. “If this is true,” I said at last, “and I’m not saying I believe you, but for the sake of argument . . . if I made what happened unhappen, can I make it . . . un-unhappen? Change the world again, only this time make it s
o that everyone remembers Aesha? Everything goes back to the way it was?”

  Yatsar’s momentary amusement faded. “I’m sorry, but no.”

  I glared at him, anger bubbling up again. “Why? Why is that impossible? If I’m God . . .”

  “You are not God,” he snapped. “I just said you are not God. Even Creator is too strong a word.” Behind him, in the street, I saw pedestrians walking faster, heads down, the wind whipping their clothes. “Ygrair’s word for you and those like you is ‘Worldshaper’—Shaper, for short.”

  “Worldshaper.” Oh, for God’s sake. “Worldshaper.” And just when I was almost ready to believe him. “You know that’s the name of my shop. Couldn’t you have been at least a little bit original?”

  He raised an eyebrow. “You think I got it from your shop? Tell me, how did that name come to you?”

  I blinked. “Well . . . it . . . it just did.”

  “Out of nowhere. Out of nothing.”

  “Yeah . . .”

  “Ex nihilo, you might say.”

  “Look—”

  “That name is not a coincidence. Even the fact you are a potter is not a coincidence. A part of you knows, has always known, the truth. Even though in the act of Shaping this world you seem to have somehow Shaped yourself, overwriting your memories so that you forgot you were the Shaper . . . which should not have happened, and I do not know why it did . . . a part of you knows.”

  “I overwrote my . . . ?” I shook my head violently. “That’s nonsense. I told you, I know where I was born. I remember growing up there. I have a mother . . .”

  “You do,” Karl said. “And she is a real person, just like your friend Aesha was a real person. But she did not exist until you Shaped this world and called her into existence from the sea of possibility.”

  Mom . . . ? No! I shook my head stubbornly. “The world has been around for billions of years.”

  “It only appears that way because you Shaped it to look that way. Most of its long history is . . . borrowed, you might say, from the original universe, the First World.” He sighed. “Time is a difficult concept when it comes to Shaped worlds, but in reality—Reality with a capital R, if you like—this world is only about ten years old.”

  “Ten . . .” I tried to take hold of my own reality—this reality—with both hands. “Ten years ago,” I said, my voice trembling a little despite my best efforts, “I entered art school. Six years ago, I graduated and moved to Eagle River. I worked in a clothing store during the day and threw pots evenings and weekends. I started selling at craft shows. I saved every penny, and borrowed more than I should. I leased this building. I moved into it. I’m about to open my new business, my own business, Worldshaper Pottery, something I’ve dreamed about since I was in high school.

  “I visit my Mom in Appleville several times a year,” I went on, my voice rising. “I have friends.” One fewer than I did this morning. “I have a boyfriend.” Or I did . . . I pushed both thoughts away. “I took a trip to Europe. I saw The Da Vinci Code: The Musical on Broadway. Hugh Jackman did his best in the Robert Langdon role, but the show was terrible.” I glared at him. “I didn’t imagine any of that.”

  “In a way you did,” Karl said. “You imagined the kind of world you wanted to live in.”

  “I wanted to live in a world with a bad Da Vinci Code musical?”

  “Not that detail,” Karl said impatiently. “Or many others. This world you have imagined . . . Shaped . . . is a lot like the First World, but not identical. Some of the changes were conscious choices on your part. Others—like, presumably, this ‘musical’ you speak of—were random, the world ordering itself, evolving, in the absence of specific instructions from you.

  “Perhaps in the First World you dreamed of having a pottery shop of your own, a few good friends, a handsome boyfriend, a favorite coffee shop. Because you are a Shaper, when Ygrair gave you this space, this . . . sandbox . . . you Shaped a world like the one you had always imagined, and made it real.” He sighed. “And then, somehow, forgot you had done so.”

  “You’re not making sense,” I snapped. “This ‘space’? This ‘sandbox’? What ‘space’? What ‘sandbox’?”

  “Ygrair calls it the Labyrinth,” Karl said. “Possibly infinite in size, apparently infinite in possibilities . . . for those with the ability to take advantage of them.”

  “Worldshapers.”

  “Yes.”

  “Like me.”

  He nodded. “Yes.”

  I looked out the window again. A dust devil swept down the street, paper swirling in its grip. The light had dimmed further and had an ominous greenish tinge. The storm hadn’t hit this early before. Things weren’t happening exactly the same. Well, obviously they weren’t, since Karl Yatsar had not shown up in my shop the last time I had lived these morning hours. “Assuming—again, for the sake of argument—that I believe you—I don’t, but pretend I do—then how did I find my way into this ‘Labyrinth’? Did I open some sort of trans-dimensional Portal?”

  “You didn’t,” Karl said. “Ygrair did.”

  “Ygrair.”

  “Yes.”

  I sighed. “How do you spell that, anyway?”

  He frowned. “Y . . . g . . . r . . . a . . . i . . . r. What does it matter?”

  “I thought it would be something like that.” Yatsar? And now Ygrair? Two names beginning with Y? This guy spun a great line of bull, but he wasn’t too good on the details. No decent fantasy author would create two names that similar for main characters. “Weird name.”

  “I suppose.”

  “A lot like your own.”

  “Is it?” He blinked. “I don’t see it.”

  Well, obviously, or you wouldn’t have made it that way. “And she’s . . . ?”

  “The discoverer of the possibilities of the Labyrinth.”

  “You know her?”

  “Very well. She is the one who sent me on the mission that has brought me here.” He looked out the window, and frowned. “The storm is almost here. Ahead of schedule.”

  “Never mind the weather,” I snapped. My patience was wearing thin again. “Go on. Tell me more about this ‘Ygrair.’”

  He looked back at me. “Ygrair . . . rules the Labyrinth. But I met her in the First World, long ago. She was injured and alone, and I helped her. I have helped her ever since.

  “Over the years, in the First World, she found those with the Talent, like you, and trained them—trained you, though you do not remember it—until they were ready to Shape their worlds. Then she opened the Labyrinth to them, and left them free to create what they would.

  “But she has powerful enemies, and though she had thought herself safe from them, they found her. They attacked, and almost killed her. Badly hurt, she fled into her own Shaped world, where I resided as her deputy. And there she told me something she had never before confided to me.” He took a deep breath. “The Labyrinth cannot exist without Ygrair. All the worlds are connected to each other, and all the worlds are connected to her. But she is now so badly hurt that her connection to the Shaped Worlds, to the Labyrinth itself, is weakening. Ygrair likens herself to the keystone of an arch. If she were to die, or weaken so much that she lost the thread of power that binds her to the Labyrinth and its many worlds, the whole thing would come tumbling down. If that happens, all the Shaped Worlds, the billions of individuals who live in them, and the Shapers who have Shaped them, will vanish as if they never existed, dissolving into the Labyrinth.”

  “Quite the apocalyptic vision,” I said. “So where do I come in?”

  “Ygrair needs to weave anew the thread of power that links her to the Shaped Worlds,” Karl said. “She sent me to find a Shaper Talented and powerful enough to obtain, and then hold within him or her, the knowledge . . . Ygrair calls it the hokhmah, an ancient word meaning ‘wisdom’ . . . of as many of the Shaped Worl
ds as possible. That Shaper must travel from world to world to world, and then to Ygrair, to pass that collected hokhmah on to her. That transfer, Ygrair says, will save her, the Labyrinth, and the Shaped Worlds within it.”

  “And you think I could be that person.”

  “With the power you displayed, in resetting the clock of your world—which is even more impressive now that I know you remember nothing of your role as Shaper of this reality—yes, I believe you could be.”

  I sighed. “So I’m the special snowflake who has to save the universe. Are you sure you didn’t copy all this from a bad fantasy novel?”

  Karl frowned. “What?”

  “Never mind. Next question. Who are these enemies of Ygrair?”

  Karl shot a glance out the window. “Time is growing short . . .”

  “So is my temper. Tell me.”

  He looked back at me again. “I am the only one Ygrair has told the truth of her origin to,” he said slowly. “She has never shared it with the Shapers, over all the years she trained them.”

  “If you believe your own story,” I said, “then these are extraordinary circumstances. I’m sure she’d want you to tell me.”

  He looked down. His hands, folded together on his lap, worked for a moment. Finally he looked up again. “Very well,” he said. “The truth is, Ygrair . . . is not from Earth.”

  Oh, good grief, I thought. Bad science fiction, not fantasy. “You’re telling me she’s an alien.”

  “If you like.”

  “I don’t like any of this. But carry on with your story.”

  “It is not a ‘story,’” he said stiffly. “It is the truth. Ygrair is not from Earth. She comes from a race called the Shurak. She fled tyranny and oppression on her home world, seeking only to be free. In her flight, she came to Earth, injured. As I said, I found her. The Shurak knew of the Labyrinth, but they used it only as a means to span the vast distances between the stars. Once, they used it to enslave many other worlds.

  “But it was Ygrair alone who discovered that those with Talent, of any race, can Shape new worlds within the Labyrinth. Every race produces those with this Talent. Trapped on Earth, Ygrair set out to find those Earth people who had it, to train them to use it . . . and then to open the Labyrinth so they could freely create whatever worlds they chose. Freedom, in opposition to the cruel tyranny of her own world—that is Ygrair’s driving passion. She set up a school for Shapers . . . people like you. Upon graduation, she opened the Labyrinth for them . . . for you.