Asarcogenesis
“Knock this realm shit out?” Angel was disgusted.
“What?”
“Your realm is the single most important place in the entire Other, bro,” Nova said. “I know you’ve probably been avoiding it because you want to sling guns in the Hardworlds all day, but this shouldn’t be a chore. Once you get the hang of it, it’s the place where all of your dreams can literally come true.”
Gradie wanted to say that all of his dreams were in the Hardworlds, but just nodded like Nova had made a really good point, and ignored Angel's condescending head shaking.
“I didn’t mean it like that,” Gradie lied. “I just meant let’s get to it.”
Nova glanced out the viewport, and Gradie noticed there were absolutely no points of light anywhere, just solid flat black.
“So we can’t actually help you in the actual making of your realm.”
“Otherwise, it wouldn’t really be your realm,” Angel added.
“But we can run you through best practices, and get you started. So, step one, fly out away from the ship until you feel sure you’re absolutely alone. You have to start your realm in a section of the Other that’s unconnected to anything else.”
“How will I know—”
“You’ll know when you got it. It feels completely different from the rest of the Other. Like that the only way you could ever get back is by summoning a door.”
“Right, like if you flew forever, there would just be nothing for all eternity, is a good way to think of it.”
“Ok, so—”
“Don’t worry about it too much. We should have given you a headstart by flying here. This is technically a pocket where you shouldn’t be able to fly from to anything else, because that’s the way I pushed it, but you never know with the Other.”
“Yeah, but don’t make in this pocket, because since we flew to it, it’s still under our dominion.”
“Right, once you make it to your own isolated space, you can start making, and a good starting point—”
“Ya’ll, know I suck at making shit right? I know you two are the fucking masters of the universe,” Gradie waved at the ship around him. “But I can’t—”
“What have you ever tried to make bro?” Nova laughed. “You’ve just been flying around until Philip gives you—”
“How about that fucking hunk of charcoal you got in your cargo bay or whatever?”
The twins looked at each other.
“Oh bro, I told you, making a craft is its own thing,” Nova said.
“And you were still probably in range of the Ball’s Prince when we found you,” said Angel.
“What?”
“The Allworld’s Prince,” said Nova. “It puts limits on what can be made. You can’t make anything larger than you can hold in your hand on the ball, and it makes making crafts a bitch while you’re in sight of it, because it’s constantly scanning—”
“What the fuck? Michael told me the prince ended after the blue!”
After all that fucking struggle in the black, after the embarrassment of towing his dead craft into the twins’ massive spaceship…
Angel laughed. “He probably thought it did. I doubt he’s made anything in years. I mean for him it’s probably not an issue.”
“So, what, when I’m out of range of the Ball, I can just snap my fingers, and—”
“I’m not saying that. Making is never simple, but when you do it in your realm, it’s as easy mode as it can get. As long as you keep your counter thoughts to a minimum, and focus on one quality at a—”
“Don’t give him any theory!” Nova snapped. “Look bro, making in a realm is as pure as it gets. Just do whatever feels right, there’s no right or wrong.”
Gradie just stared at them, waiting for his inevitable release into the black. It felt like waiting on a test, and despite the twins’ assurances and the revelation about the Allworld’s prince, it felt like a test he was doomed to fail. Nova sensed his hesitation.
“Look, let me give you one last piece of advice that really helped me when I first started. The Other, it’s not like some void that you pop your thoughts into. It’s not empty, and it’s not dead. If you think of making as creating something from nothing, of course you’re gonna have problems. It’s better to think of it like you’re molding an invisible, unlimited, living substance. Like sculpting clay, feel me?”
The idea caught in Gradie’s head, growing and expanding in the same way he imagined his imminent creations would, and his mind wrapped around it like some lost missing piece. It made perfect sense, and once again he found that learning something about the core functions of the Otherworld didn’t feel like studying a new concept, like reaching a natural conclusion, his mind falling into a groove. It felt like remembering.
“And it’s not just a thought experiment, dude,” Nova continued. “When you get into it, you’ll know. It’s like being tapped into a reservoir, of like this molten, liquid possibility. Like a bee floating in honey, or like—”
“Yeah, feels like an electrified liquid,” Angel said, looking out at the black, talking with his hands in a rolling motion. “Carbonated, even. Like dream Sprite.”
The twins nodded at each other, and looked at Gradie, who could only nod back, now speechless, sunk into his thoughts. The twins must have taken this for confusion.
“Anyway,” Nova sighed. “The main point is that we couldn’t do any of this shit on our own. You make something with the Other, not just in it.”
“Enough theory!” Angel said in a mocking tone, and beeped an old TV remote in his hand. A square-shaped hole opened up in the floor as part of it rolled back, revealing a smooth metal shaft, angled like a slide, which ended about two stories down into what looked like a square of black carpet.
“Alright bro, you ready?” Nova said. Gradie nodded, pushed himself up onto his feet atop the floating cushion he had been sitting on, willed it to slant slightly like a diving block, and that nostalgic adrenaline from his swim team days rattled up his throat and echoed as a new sensation. The black square promised a lot of things, but all of them in whispers.
“Oh and one last thing,” Nova said hurriedly. “Once you get settled, make a phone or something that connects to our comms. They won’t be able to reach you when you make your realm unless you establish a connection. But make it something you can cut off easily and that’s voice only.”
Won’t be able to reach me? Does that mean it’s possible for someone to hide themselves in a realm, like a self-imposed box? Or maybe that’s where speakers and hunters come in… Holy shit. I’ve never been somewhere Michael can’t just call me with the comms besides a Hardworld. I’ve never actually been alone here, or anywhere, never just me and my Spirit—
“You good?” the twins said together.
“Yeah. See ya'll later.”
It seemed an anticlimactic way to go out, as he threw himself off the block with his hands together and his chin tucked into his chest out of instinct, the twins' laughter at his exit strategy vanishing behind him, but as he sank into the black, and his skin missed the cold feeling of water, it felt right. Many times, as he had gone off the block at a meet, he had wondered what he would be like on the other side of the race, tired and breathless, triumphant or defeated? Changed, empowered with a new confidence, or filled with redoubled doubts?
It was the same here. As he came out of the dive, his body slowed, as if he really had dove right into a living liquid, and because his mind went with the metaphor primed for it by the twins, or because that really was what it was like out here in the deep black, he stroked his arms and floated through the black like a swimmer in a lane with its own magnetic pull, then came to a stop in the void, arms and legs slowly stroking like he was treading darkness, and the twins were gone.
Everything was gone. The blackness was so deep and complete that a physical panic shot through him, like the fear of going blind, until he looked down and saw his grey ski suit and legs kicking below.
Guess I can ditch this. Finally.
He made the suit break apart and float away like wispy ashes of burned paper, and his black Hardworlder trenchrobe and attire appeared in its place as the mirror mask wrapped itself around his head, echoing his own heartbeat back at him in his ears, a strange quirk in a bloodless reality.
Despite the color of his clothes, they didn’t blend into the void, as they were just slightly above pure black, and due to some “memory staining” or whatever the Twins would have called it, the cloth and leather reflected a nonexistent city light, surely a memory of the Allworld glow as it had been around the 2 o clock line outside the team’s office.
The thought of the Allworld sent a tinge of longing through him. Out here, alone, he finally missed it, that place composed exclusively of other people.
No, I want to see what a world made of me looks like. I want to see myself, finally, from the inside out.
He reached his hand out and found the gesture empty. He felt the darkness laughing at him.
No. What did Nova say? This is still their “Dominion”. I have to fly out until… something.
So he started to fly, and immediately found a flaw in his plan. In the absolute darkness, he couldn’t be sure he was moving at all. He felt a backward tug on his skull, applied the same mental force he would have if he were flying around the Allworld, but there was nothing there to disprove his suspicion that he was going nowhere fast.
A few ideas came to him. Take his glove off, fly backwards, wait till it disappears… then what? No, summon a light, throw it in front of you, fly towards it. What forever? Won’t that just burrow a tunnel in the twin’s void? He imagined himself like an ant burrowing a channel in the darkness forever, never leaving his current pocket, only expanding it.
Great. The twins had probably forgotten how to make a realm the same way Michael had forgotten how to make a craft. So, I’m stuck. Again. Only this time there’s no one coming to help me out of pity.
Maybe I’ll make a door, go back to the Ball, fly around and just tell them I made a realm. How would they know?
That idea died as quickly as it had flared up, and he took a breath of nothing and thought again.
“Fly away until you are sure you are alone.”
I need to get out of this pocket. I need to fucking break out.
He saw the pocket of Other-reality in his mind like a bubble, and while his previous ant tunnel metaphor had been envisioned as extending the pocket in a tail, he now saw himself flying into the wall of the space, pressing against it, until it expelled him like a foreign particle out of a microbe.
He held onto the metaphor for dear life and flew, and this time, he could feel the motion in his teeth. He was going faster than he ever had, faster than the ball would ever have allowed him to, faster than even this empty pocket could tolerate. He closed his eyes, and found a different kind of darkness, full of electric echoes of color and substance.
I’m going to break out. Break out. Break free. Free.
Flashes of memory emerged in the electric darkness. Standing at the gas station, feeling his reality shatter around him as they swung open the car doors. Standing up at his desk on the office job. Opening the door to the Hardworld on training day. Finding the coin in that dusty desk as the sheet metal warehouse collapsed around him.
They tessellated, linked to each other, repeated and rhymed and together comprised separate words of a single thought.
I can break free. I have never met a barrier I didn’t fucking demolish. This one’s got no chance.
The visions broke out in his mind and projected themselves directly onto the stretching surface of the void. He felt his speed slow as he stretched the imagined flexible edge of the pocket void, felt all of its weight and existence buckle under his force, felt his will tested against the echoed, repeating, vibrating thought that was the twins creation of it, then felt it break and shatter into a burst of white static noise…
Then silence. Real silence. He felt it instantly. He was alone. He knew his severance from all other Spirits was total in a pure rush of dreamknowledge that for once sounded like nothing more than his own inner voice, and for the first time he understood just how loud the Other was, naturally. The Allworld had screamed in the voices of its million makers just as the twin’s pocket void had hummed in the brief offhanded thought of its creation, but this place was silent. This place was listening.
But it was also very small. He reached out his hand, and felt nothing, but knew the edge of it was just beyond reach.
So he flew at it, and screamed.
The space flexed for him, yielded to him, grew for him, instantly. He was being heard in a way he had never felt outside of a lucid dream, but while there lucidity was fragile and ready to burst at the first spike of excitement and expel him into the waking world, this place was solid, unyielding. It would never abandon him and never expel him, and it would listen to him till the end of time.
He wept. He screamed. He flew
He flew faster than light. He flew in a circle, came back on his path, then again, then again, then flew along the inner wall of the circle of existence until the bubbles surface broke outward in a flash of light that reflected in his tears, and reality was no longer an orb but limitless void all listening to him so that his cry was echoed forever.
His tears reflected the light long after it was gone and streamed off him in little droplets that were the first bits of matter to ever exist, and he molded them and grew them and their two qualities of liquidness and lightness split in two and there was a great ocean and a great light and as the light reflected off the water and pierced through it and destroyed its molecules in fusion that created other elements and matter there was a great crystal sound like the singing of a star…
And it was a long time before Gradie remembered to make a phone to connect to the Comms, and when he did it was Philip on the other end chewing him out and ranting about weeks and Speakers, but Gradie just laughed, and his laugh echoed off all his creations and came back to him like an old friend.
