by Alex Raizman
"Yeah!" Relief. Finally, someone who could help him.
"Great, great." Her tone didn't sound like she thought it was all that great, but Ryan was still just ecstatic to have someone who was talking to him. "Turn left into the store, there's a dear."
He did. The door he stepped into belonged to some upscale clothing boutique.
The room, however, looked like a planetarium on steroids, a platform that was surrounded by open, starry sky. A tall woman, dark hair falling almost to her waist, stood in front of a bank of keyboards and monitors. She turned, and Ryan saw that despite the accent she didn’t look British-not that British people all look alike, but her skin tone and bone structure suggested a Middle Eastern ancestry.
Then she glanced up at him through a few wisps of stray hairs that hung in front of her forehead, and Ryan saw her eyes. They were the oldest eyes he had ever seen, eyes that seemed to stare right through him and to the stars beyond. He didn’t even register that she was frowning. "Do me a favor, love? When the view overwhelms you and you need to puke, stick your head out the door, yeah?"
Reeling from the shock of what he was seeing, Ryan did exactly that.
People tend to shy away from someone throwing up in the street, but he was still drawing stares. He pulled his head back into the door - and back into the strange room that seemed to stretch into infinity. It still made his head spin looking at it, but he fought back the nausea this time. He glanced out into the door behind him again, still seeing the normal city, before turning his eyes back into the room and seeing a field of stars and galaxies further than his eyes could process.
"There now, feel better?" The woman asked, her voice overly chipper.
"Ugh." Not the wittiest response in history, but everything was happening so fast that Ryan had not really had a chance to process everything. His brain was running a thousand miles a minute and he was holding on for dear life.
"Right, fair enough I suppose.” The woman gave him a knowing smile, and Ryan wondered how many other people she had seen get sick at the sight of another universe inside a building. “What's your name?"
"Ryan Smith." He felt a bit bad for giving such short responses, but right now he felt proud he could manage to speak at all. His anxiety began to worm its way up his spine to settle into his brain. You can’t handle this. No one can handle this, but especially not you, it whispered to him.
She gave him an encouraging nod, and if his brusque replies bothered her, it didn’t show on her face. "Ryan Smith. Doesn’t get much more generic than that, does it, love? Well, Ryan, your world’s gone straight to bollocks today, hasn’t it? You can call me Crystal, that’s what I go by these days." The accent was starting to sound more and more like a bad impersonation. It was like something out of a film set in England but with American actors who had never actually spoken to a British person. A caricature, a fake.
And in the grand scheme of things, a totally irrelevant detail.
Even with the affectation, getting a name for one of these people was a huge relief. It made things real, made things anchored. She was not the mysterious woman with the British accent anymore, she was Crystal, a person with a name. The growing anxiety attack slunk away to crouch in the back of Ryan’s mind. Without the bracing effect of the fear, he started to sink down to the floor.
Or at least, he would have, but the floor rose up to meet him, silvery liquid ooze that formed a chair under him. It might have been the most comfortable chair he’d ever sat in, perfectly molded to fit him. For a moment the anxiety tried to claw its way back in, but he was able to push it aside. When your day included talking to a mysterious man who had followed you your entire life, someone trying to shoot you to steal the pocket universe you were holding, and stepping into another universe in a storefront...the floor becoming a chair seemed much more manageable.
"Crystal.” He clutched the name like every remaining bit of his sanity depended on it. “Thank you."
"I haven't done anything yet. At least let me help before you thank me." She flashed another quick smile and tapped on the computer screens a few more times. "There. That should give us at least a bit of time without interruption." She motioned, and the chair he was sitting on slid across the floor to where a table and another chair were forming. She took a seat in the new chair, practically flopping into it. "So...you, love, look like you've been having a hell of a day. Probably a hell of a life. Why don't you tell me about it, yeah?"
Despite his own questions building at the back of his mind, words came spilling out of Ryan's mouth. The man in the suit. The strange conversation. The nanoverse. The brute. Running. All of it, up until…
"So I googled nanoverse and I found your site and I clicked the link and a phone number came up, so I gave it a call and then you answered and you said-"
Crystal, who had been quiet throughout the entire thing, finally interrupted him with a soft and concerned tone, "Yeah, yeah, I remember that bit, was there for it."
Gentle tone or not, Ryan snapped his mouth shut, and felt himself blushing. "Right, of course. Sorry."
"No worries. Honestly, I'm shocked that looking into the nanoverse didn't completely fry your brain. As little as you understand..." She shrugged.
"Can I ask some questions?"
She nodded. "I'm sure you're just full to the brim with them. But before you do...a lot of the answers involve words your language doesn't even have concepts for. I'll do my best to explain, but I'll need to - no offense - dumb it down for you."
"No offense taken.” Ryan had never felt dumber in his life, which after all the confusion of today was saying something. His life had been a steady barrage of weirdness, which helped some with accepting what was going on, but Ryan had never felt more lost. The one thing he was sure of was that he had almost been killed earlier today, and a smart man put survival in front of erecting a veneer of intelligence. He decided to start with one of the questions that was pressing on his mind the most. “What is a nanoverse?"
She smiled. "Exactly what it says on the tin. An entire universe, but in a little bubble you can stick in your pocket and carry around."
Ryan instinctively reached out to touch his pocket. The nanoverse was there, and as near as he could tell was bigger now, about the size of a pool ball.
"What...what do you do with it?"
For some reason that seemed to be the funniest thing Crystal had heard in quite some time. She laughed so hard she snorted. "Sorry, sorry, I shouldn't laugh, but...oh God, you humans! Found an entire universe big enough to fit in your pocket, and first thing you ask is 'what do you do with it?' Completely brilliant. I love you lot."
"You're not human?"
"Oh, no, of course not. 'What do you do with it?' Priceless!"
He frowned. "Why's that so funny?"
She let out a few more laughs, followed by a long, amused sigh. "Because it's just so...practical. Skips over the hows and the whys and the whos and just straight to the 'what do I do with it?'"
Ryan shrugged, looking at the floor. "Well...I don't mean to be rude, but you said we only had a bit of time?"
"Too right, sorry. You become a god is what you do. Ryan Smith, not the most divine name ever conceived, but give it a couple thousand years and it'll be up there."
"I'm sorry, become a what?"
"A god. Same as me, and that brute. That was likely Enki, by the way. Nasty piece of work, that one. You can even get some friends together, form a pantheon...and that nanoverse, that'll form the seat of your power. Your divine spark."
Ryan leaned forward, resting his head on his hands. It was good to have confirmation for the name of that trigger-happy bastard that had tried to steal his nanoverse. It made him seem less monstrous, more human, and therefore less oppressive.
Of course, it was marred by the idea that he literally was holding another universe in his pocket. The idea was several orders of magnitude more outlandish than being followed by an incorporeal notetaker. “I’m sorry, it’s an entire universe? That.
..how is that even possible?”
Crystal shrugged. “How is it possible gravity curves both space and time, love? Roll with it, yeah?”
“I don’t know if I can just roll with that.”
“Look,” Crystal sighed. “You’ve had someone no one else could see following you around your entire life, yeah? So, you already had a choice to make: you had to believe you were mad, or accept that there was magic in the world. Great news, love: I’m telling you it’s the second.”
That hit home. The relief rolled over him like a wave, almost bringing him to tears. He wasn’t crazy.
When he was able to think about anything besides that, it finally sunk in that Crystal had also said there was a ticking clock over this whole affair. "Okay, fine. There’s a universe in my pocket. So I...what, shape it, somehow? Get worshippers?"
Crystal was shaking her head. "Language is really difficult here. No worshippers, not anymore. We don't get power from that - most people are too bloody scientific these days for it to be much good anyway - but you do shape the nanoverse. Give it life."
"How?"
"You already are. Which is kind of bad, since you're full of panic and fear and confusion, so that's gonna be pouring into it." She gave him a concerned look. "Look, all of this is a metaphor for what's really going on. It'd be equally accurate to say you becoming an alien force working in the shadows, or a number of other things."
Ryan took a deep breath. "Crystal? Not helping."
"Right.” Crystal shook her head. “Saying you’re a god is what pretty much what everyone does these days anyway, so it should be fine. Take a bit to catch your breath. But, and not to put pressure on you, you don't have a lot of time to sort this out."
Ryan groaned into his hands. "Why not?"
"Most of us? We got centuries to work through all of it. Hell, I wasn't even human - my people predated you lot by a good million years. But that thing you got there?" She motioned towards his pocket. "It's the last nanoverse. This means that whatever else you are, and you could become, you’re the Eschaton. Which means as you go through your personal apotheosis, you're also going to need to manage the end of the world."
“I’ll need...what?” The anxiety came back now, stronger than ever. “You want me to end the world?”
“Oh, no, love. I don’t want you to end the world.” Crystal waved her hands as if she was trying to brush the thought away. “I’m just saying you are going to end the world, no matter what you want.”
“I…” Ryan took a few deep breaths, but his heart was pounding. Despite being in a room the size of a universe, it felt like the walls were closing in.
The human brain is an interesting thing. It was designed for apes that wandered the beach and picked up food, did some hunting, maybe managed some interesting vocalizations. It was an adaptable tool, to be sure, one that was able to navigate cars far faster than the little apes could have ever imagined going, it could process all the information of the modern age, and it could even take the apes beyond the atmosphere and to the nearest space rock.
But sometimes, it was over capacity. Sometimes, events were too much, too weird, too mind blowing for it to keep running the way it was supposed to. In such cases, it had a number of defense mechanisms available to it. Ryan’s brain flipped through the available options like they were a flipbook of possible breakdowns. In an instant it considered tears, denial, turning into a complete nervous wreck, and ultimately decided it would be best served by just shutting down for a bit.
As Ryan fainted, the chair shifted so he wouldn’t land too hard on the floor.
Chapter 3
Roll with it
When Ryan came to, he was in a bed. For one sweet, blissful moment, he thought it was his bed, in his apartment. He’d roll over and open his eyes and the silent man in the suit would be taking notes and none of this would have ever happened.
When he opened his eyes, there wasn’t any such luck. He was in a strange bed in a strange room, and the ceiling above him was an open sky of galaxies, and instead of the man in the suit there was Crystal in a dress.
“Oh, good, you’re awake.” She looked up from the tablet she was tip-tapping away on. “You’ll probably be doing that a few more times.”
He groaned as he sat up. “There’s that many more Earth shattering revelations?”
“Well, yes, I suppose that’s true too. But mostly it’s your brain reconfiguring to fit your new role. Tends to lead to fainting.” Her tone was matter of fact, and she tapped away at the pad.
“My...what?”
She sighed and took off her glasses, giving him a bored look. “Ryan, love. You’re a perfectly intelligent individual for the limitations of your species. You know exactly what I said. Your little nap used up much of our completely safe time, and I could give you an entire textbook to try and explain it all and by the time you got done reading it, you’d understand only a tenth of what it was saying. Try to just roll with things, yeah?”
Ryan took a deep breath. “Okay. But I need to ask a couple more questions, at least.” She motioned for him to go along. “First, who was the man in the suit?”
She shrugged. “Exactly who, I don’t know. There’s lots of those buggers running around. Gone by different names throughout history, but they go by ‘Curators’ in our circles. They make sure things don’t go too out of sorts.”
Ryan felt more follow up questions building but reminded himself of what Crystal had said. “Okay. I’ll roll with it.”
She smiled. “Good, you can learn! And the other?”
“What does Enki want with me?”
Crystal sucked in air between her teeth. “Ah. Good question. You’re bound to the nanoverse now, yeah? Well, none of us has ever managed to hold on to two of the things. He gets that, he’d be the most powerful, without question. So he wants your nanoverse, and he wants you dead so he can claim it.”
“So...just giving it to him isn’t an option?”
“Not while you’re alive.” She cocked her head a bit as he got the rest of the way out of the bed. It was silver, like the chair had been, formed out of the floor. As he stood up, the bed flowed away like it had never been there. She gestured, and a chair formed for him to sit in. “And I’d prefer it if even if you decide you’d rather not be alive, you don’t give it to him. Enki is a right bastard.”
“Okay. But I’m good. Want to stay alive for now.”
She chuckled again. “For now? Love, you’re immortal now. Staying alive is going to be easy, especially once you learn to master your new powers.”
“I have powers? Like...flying and lightning?”
“Maybe. It varies for everyone, depending on your personality and your nanoverse. You can selectively filter the perceptions of lesser minds, ignore things like walls and crowds, and if your nanoverse is intact and hasn’t been compromised by another god, you’ll come back from pretty much anything. Eventually. It’ll take a while for you to sync up to it fully enough, yeah? You’re still undergoing Apotheosis, what we call a Nascent. You’re vulnerable right now.”
“Wait, Apotheosis? What do you mean-”
Crystal wasn’t interested in waiting for Ryan to finish the question. “Apotheosis. The act of fully becoming a god. It’s a subtle change, but once you’re done you’ll have the full powers you’re capable of. Nowhere near as dramatic as being Nascent - becoming a baby god. Which, love, you are.”
Ryan blinked a few times to process that. He was a long way from accepting it as gospel, but saying ‘that’s impossible’ felt like a waste of breath. “Okay. How long…”
“Nope!” She interrupted, her voice full of false cheer. “Question time is over, Ryan Smith, the dullest named god in history. For starters, roll with it, remember? Second of all, we’re here.”
“We’re...here? Where’s here? We didn’t go anywhere.”
“Sure we did, love. You think this is just for show? We’re in my…” She tilted her head and tapped her chin. “Let’s call it a ship.”<
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“A planetarium ship?” Ryan asked with a frown.
“Sure, yeah. Why not, that’s a fine name.” The door appeared against the wall. “Why don’t you go ahead and look? It’ll be awhile before Enki thinks to look here. Try not to faint or vomit again, love.”
He opened the door and peered out. He hadn’t felt any movement, any motion, but there was no question that they weren’t at the same storefront they had gone through before. Or the same city. Or the same sky, Ryan thought, his eyes drawn upwards. The sky above him wasn’t like anything he’d ever seen. It was full of planets that hovered close to the ground, dozens of them, the smallest one twice the size of the moon and easily as bright.
Some had rings circling them, others seemed to have their own shattered moons. They didn’t appear stationary either, but danced across the sky in an impossibly intricate ballet, dancers ducking and weaving amongst each other in ways that gravity would never have allowed. As he watched, the planets got larger and smaller whenever they passed into a new section of the stained-glass sky. The whole tableau would have been nauseating if it wasn’t so fascinating.
From behind him, Crystal said, “Welcome to Cipher Nullity. It’s not a wretched hive of scum and villainy - it's where you go where you’re trying to hide from one of those hives.”
Ryan registered her words and filed them in the back of his mind to process when he could stop gaping at the landscape. That sky drew his eye, and it was an effort to force himself to look away and at the ground. The earth - or rather, the surface of Cipher Nullity - was a collection of dust that looked black, except where the wind whipped it up into a cloud to show that it was actually made of tiny particles of every color that shimmered into a rainbow when they caught the planetary light from above.
This field of iridescent dust led to a city, an old one. No, Ryan corrected himself, not an old one, an ancient one. Many of the structures showed serious signs of erosion from age and the multicolored dust. Even so, what was left were still massive ruins of golden stone, forming pillars and pyramids. In spite of the beauty, there was an empty sadness to it - it screamed that it was once grand and glorious.