The Fruits of Creation

 I do. That's the answer.

I heard the question you asked.  That's a little too personal.  The question I'll answer, though is, "Do you have any regrets associated with your powers?" I didn't used to, but I do now. And it really only came about a few months ago.

The conflict was massive. You remember. Absolutely otherworldly, so huge in scope I could barely even describe it, if human language had the words for it. I and the rest of the Association and even most of The Union - yes, them, or at least the ones not in the brand new Ultramax in Colorado - gathered together to combine forces to defeat Death.

No, not the Death, not the real one. The real Death's a good guy. No, trust me, really. Nothing like how they portray Death in the comic books. 

Well, for starters, she's beautiful.  She's not as somber as you'd think, kind of upbeat. Philosophical, but hopeful. She doesn't really care to meddle with human affairs, just goes on about her business mostly.  She's kind of a pro forma member, we don't ask her to intervene on our behalf.

Because the one time she did she looked so disappointed in us, none of us could bear to ever do it again.  We don't want to get on her bad side, you see.  It's important not to have Death angry or upset with you.  She's a good guy, but it's even more important that she's a good guy you're on the good side of, see?

Anyway, this other guy called himself Death too, and he was pretty terrible. To get rid of him, we had to combine forces to create a sort of pocket universe and trap him inside it, then break the connection so he'd be stuck there until it dissipates. Don't ask me details, Menta ran it and kept it from blowing up, ask them how it works. I was mostly just raw power and the focus for the others. So it was my hands doing the actual forming of that universe, The Union shoved Death into it through me, and the Association's Gamma team did the actual severing.

No, Gamma has nothing to do with hierarchies. Gamma is just the designation we put on the Metaphysical power sets. Spiritual, some magicks, some very specific willpower sets.

There are no Alphas, or Betas for that matter. The designations are Gamma, Delta, Lambda, Tau and Omega.

I was a Gamma this time.

I'm getting to it, just...hear me out.

So when the rest of the Gammas pulled me out, I lost a bit off the end of a finger. Just a little bit, barely even noticeable. See the scar? Yeah, that little white dot. But what came out instead of my fingertip was a world.

I can't really explain it. Menta has a hypothesis but testing it would mean opening that universe again, if that's even possible, and no one wants to do that.

It's not big on our scale. It's maybe the size of a basketball, just a beautiful little planet with oceans and mountains and clouds and people.

Not at first. When we first emerged from the merge it was falling out of the sky with the rest of us, I think it was Prophet who first realized what it was and how to handle it safely. When we got back and mostly healed Prophet had it in an isolation suspension and said congrats, it's a world.

I don't get it, I said. Why tell me, specifically? And he said I was the source. Scale or something but my tiny little slice of fingertip, in that universe, is a whole world in this one. And it had been crude and empty when we got back but by the time Prophet was telling me about it, it was alive with plants.

Then it had more than just plants, it had animals. Minimus pushed himself right down to his limits and reported that he was about the size of a giant redwood on that scale, but he could make out animals, some big ones like dinosaurs but, you know, different from actual dinosaurs. And some smaller ones.

A couple of weeks later he did it again and the life had changed. The dinosaurs were gone and different animals were taking over.

Actually I think he sneaked down there a lot because he spent a lot of time in the lab with it, and it was a funny inversion of his capability, you know?  The shrinking guy shrinks to his tiniest and on this world he's as big as the biggest tree - and that's as small as he can get there!  I wonder if he just stomped around some empty desert pretending to be a giant monster.  He says he didn't but still...

And it was Minimus who rigged up the telemicroscopes so we could observe the surface more clearly.  We really needed it, too.  On that scale, Everest would be about a half-millimeter high.

No, no Everest.  It isn't a mirror of Earth.  It's fascinating though, we were able to take pictures of places from one day to the next and we could see geological progressions.  Menta says they're working on a paper about it; I'd rather they just turned it all over to the university.  But Menta's happiest when they're lecturing, so: fat chance of that.

Last month we started detecting higher order animals, and last week we spotted cities. Something gained sentience and started advancing.  

What's really weird is that when we're observing them, they seem to be moving at normal speed for their size.  You'd think, since their time seems to be moving at something like ten million years per day, we'd have no chance to even suspect there was life there, it'd be living and dying far too fast for us to detect.  Imagine a bristlecone pine, the oldest single living thing on earth, and in our universe it's there and gone in one minute.  And that's what happens - just not when we're looking.  When we're looking, their time is a lot closer to our time.

No, recording doesn't help.  Tried it.

Even when we're observing them, they're moving far, far faster than we are.  What's normal at their scale is really rocketing right along on ours.  

 So it appears that their physics isn't quite the same as ours even though they're in the universe with us. Probably has something to do with their time being its own thing too. We can hear them and we're close to figuring out their languages, but we can't talk to them. Even a super high frequency radio signal to us would be lower than the longest wave radio frequency to them, so they probably can't hear it even if they were listening to such an extreme end of the spectrum. We can't send Minimus down to visit, imagine if actual Godzilla crouched down to try to talk to you? How would people react? It'd be chaos, we can't do that to them.

If we tried to communicate, and all of us left the room, their languages might change so much in the interim that any kind of contact we could make would have to start all over again, maybe with a culture so far removed from the one we contacted that we would be, what?  Legend?  Deities?

I don't think they can even perceive us.  I don't think I want them to.

But they're beautiful. They haven't fractured into countries with conflicting interests, no religions - Well, actually there's a few that worship me.

Yeah, Prophet laughs at that too. That's okay, I don't think they're worshipping me specifically but maybe? It's hard to say. It doesn't dominate their culture.  The predominant belief system seems to be a kind of animism that imbues the whole world with a spiritual presence.  It's very equable.

They have art and science and everything. It's so different from ours but even so, some themes are easily recognized. Love is big. Wonder, awe - old-fashioned marveling at beauty - respect, all popular concepts. They've come so far in such a short time, it's dizzying. Imagine if our world's history started two months ago, intelligent humans would barely occupy the last five minutes! And these beings have populated their world for nearly half of its existence, their culture is far, far older than humanity's on its scale.

But the world is fading. It looks like it'll dissipate when its original universe does, like a split muon mimicking the spin of its separate portion. No, no idea. Ask Menta.

It'll probably happen when I'm not looking.  While I'm looking they're real and relatable and when I leave and come back, they're new.  They're...more and yet somehow still themselves, you know?

It's like watching your children grow up.  You drink in every moment of their lives, jealously cling to every breath, share every laugh of every day and you get so tired and go to bed and wake up and they're new somehow.  How does that even happen?

This is my regret. A tiny triviality of me, without planning or even intent, created this world of living, breathing, thinking, loving beings and I can't express my apologies for dooming them to this brief existence. I can't tell them how proud I am of their harmonious society, their compassion for each other. I marvel at the miracle of them but I have to do it from here, from this remove.

So do they get too little time?  Do I get too little time with them, even when I can't even exist on the same plane with them?  Or is this just being selfish?  They're on an entire world, after all, and they seem to get along without me.

I want to tell them that I'm sorry. I want to tell them that I love them. Even if I could convey the message to them, they would grow around it and it would become a part of their history even while it continues to be part of my present. I won't have much more time with them so I'm spending all that I can of it close to them, just glad to have gotten to share what little we could. 

I don't even know who is fading from whom.  Which of us is more real?  Are they fading away from me, or am I fading away from them?  I guess it depends on where you're standing, and I can only stand here, shouting down to them that I love them, hoping that they can hear it, can feel it.

I'll have to tear my eyes away eventually.  At some point, one moment will have to be our last together, and I won't even realize it until it's already over.  But until then...I have regrets for wrenching them into life they never asked for, with the pains and sorrows it holds, even as I am filled with hope and joy at what they are making of it.

I do have regrets, but those are nothing compared to how much I love them.

I do.

The Mentor*

 

Dark felt him arrive within her.  She felt his nothingness impinge on her own, an emphasis of things unsaid, of thoughts unrealized.

Like her sister, Dark towered immensely above galaxies, wading through them as they swirled around her.  She liked the way they tingled.  But she wasn’t concentrating on a tingle now.  She was concentrating on something, where nothing had been before.  Dark knew what that meant.

are you in there, she thought.  can you hear me.  Where Light could make herself known across any distance, Dark was subtle.  Knowing Dark was always an exercise.

yes

Ah.  there you are.  how is it?

I do not know how to answer that

good, that’s fine.

am I supposed to be doing anything right now

no, no.  be less of that.  be none of that, if you can.  nothing is limitless until you start to make something of it, and then you lose nothing.

…that was a little confusing…

I know.  don’t let it worry you.  She gave his mind, the vanishing nothingness of him, a little push to send him further down, further in, feeling his consciousness recede.  He might come out on his own presently: in a moment, a millennium, or never.  She might pull him out or simply let him dissipate inside her, his light slowly fading into the Dark.

Some gods came out of the Dark, but they generally didn’t.  This one had gone into Darkness before and once or twice – she wasn’t counting – she had thought she felt him beginning to coalesce out of nothing.  But it wouldn’t work, and his spark would fade until Light happened upon him again, he built his universes, and he would pursue a line of inquiry that brought him to her.  Again and again and again, his spark would appear, the tickle where nothing should be, and she would give him a gentle push in the right direction, and that would be that until the next time.   She kind of liked this one, she appreciated his resilience.  And Light was disposed toward him which naturally endeared him to herself as well.  Where Light went, Dark invariably followed. 

Where Dark went, though, sometimes Light could not.  Of the twins, Dark was older.  It was easy to forget, but so many gods danced on the very edge of the realization.  So often one would proclaim, “let there be light!” and lo, there was light and Light, and the silly little god preened in his success, never realizing that Dark had been there the whole time.  She would smile quietly, epochs of amusement rippling across the cosmoses.

The gods who called for light rarely learned the lesson of nothing.  Nothing was more than they could handle.  They swaggered and boasted and ruled jealously over minutiae – how close they were to having a grasp on nothing! – and after their last selfishly created worshippers had gasped its last and crumbled to dust, they faded away.  Their Light went out and into the Dark they went, having learned nothing in the end.

What a waste.  Or was it?  They never came back to report their findings.

This little fellow, however, was something else.  He had born himself from himself, which was pretty standard for gods, and eaten his former self – also not surprising.  He had had promise before; some of his earlier selves had gone inside her to explore nothing, always with great potential.  So she always welcomed him into herself, feeling him becoming smaller and fainter as he came to grips with the realization that nothing was greater than himself.  But he kept trying, which she appreciated.  Most didn’t come back even once for a second chance at making sense of nothing.

Nothing was not greater than Dark, of course.  She contained it within herself.  One could be excused for imagining that nothing wouldn’t need containing, but it most definitely did.  Dark was a natural for it, and had contained nothing for as long as she could remember.

Light wandered by, and Dark embraced her with affection.  That was another thing: Dark was neither cold nor hot, though it was assumed she was icily, bitingly cold.  Dark was nothing of the sort, she was merely there.  Light’s own warmth passed through Dark as it always did.  She felt it, reveling in the incoherent but luxurious energy, passing through her and back into Light herself.  Light felt the warmth and the truth of its passage through Dark, and embraced her sister some more.

Light wandered on.  She did that.  Dark would probably join her soon; that was what she did.

Eons passed, or perhaps no time at all.  It wasn’t important.  Light watched more young gods feverishly debating causality and getting all of it wrong when Dark felt a funny tickle.

mmm?

“What is it?”

I think…I think he’s coming out.

“Really?  How exciting!”

it is.  he’ll be the first of him, I think.

“You had another one, once.”

more than once.  oof.  that was a long time ago. or will be.  he became very non-linear, very interesting to talk to if you don’t mind the questions you’re about to ask having been answered already.

how am I supposed to…

ah.  I hear you.  can you come to me?

all right

here, take hold.  hold on to me.   Light, help us…

Light reached into Dark.  “There you are!  Come with me.”  The young god emerged from Darkness, immeasurably changed from when he went in.  He blinked slowly at Light.

“You’re beautiful,” he said, with the realization that perception up until that point had been wanting and now, with so much more perception to draw upon, Light was almost beyond bearing even for a god.

Light had never had any illusions.  “As are you,” she responded graciously.  And reflecting her brilliance, he was.  Then he turned to Dark.

He couldn’t tell Dark she was beautiful.  He had been about to, but it was too huge a truth to speak, to even face.  Light was beautiful but Dark was so much more.  To try to give it voice could only diminish it.  There was nothing he could say.

Faced with Dark, filled with the knowledge of nothing, a young god wept with joy.

Dark smiled.  Epochs of sympathy rippled across the cosmoses.  it’s a lot, isn’t it?

“I had no idea!”

Light embraced the little fellow.  “Don’t try to sort it all out just yet.  But would you like to consider expanding your understanding?”

“I don’t know if I can take it.”  He continued to gaze into Dark, hungrily.  “But I want to.”

“Okay.”  Light turned to look into Dark, too.  “What do you think?”

Dark shrugged.   Time fell in slow waves around her, glimmering faintly. dichotomies.

“All right.  Now, young one.  Do you remember the exercise with my fingers?”

“Yes.  You asked if there was more nothing.”

“Right.  We had been talking about infinities.”

“Infinity.”

“Infini-ties,” Light clarified.  “Look at Dark, my darling.”

“I don’t know if I can.”

She soothed him gently.  “Shush, of course you can.  Just look.  Show him, love.”

Dark pressed her fingers together gently.

“Dark is nothing.  She is infinite nothing, nothing beyond measure.  Look at the space between her fingers.”

“Okay.”

Dark pressed her fingers together tighter.

“Now.  Remember the first lesson?  And Dark is infinite nothing, with nothing between her fingers, and now they’re pressed tighter together.  What is in the space between her fingers?”

The last time he’d been asked this question, a young god had been tentative and confused.  He sounded far surer now.  “An infinity of nothing.”

Light nodded.  “Good.  Now: what is outside of her fingers?”  Dark pressed her fingers together a little more tightly.  Singularities foamed in and out of existence between them, the mathematics of infinitesimal points of potential wrenching back and forth between reality and possibility.

He looked at her fingers, then around them.  Dark’s finger pressed together tighter still and time began to collapse around them.  what is the inverse of infinite nothing?  you started to see the edge of it from inside me.  what lies beyond the edge of infinity?

“Oh,” he said, and winked out.

“Oh!” Light gasped.  She brightened, a happy laugh escaping her.  “I feel him!”  She gleamed.  She flared.  “I feel him!”

She blazed. And Dark knew how a god faced with unutterable beauty had felt.

*This story follows the metaphysical events of "The Student."