Creation: Book 3: Strandbinder Complete!

Although the new universe was relatively young, a baby by human standards, it was also vast and unending. If a person could travel at the speed of sound and made it a priority to see what lies beyond the farthest edges, they'd still never reach the ends of the nascent space simply due to its pure rate of expansion. The longer the universe existed, the further the borders of its domain became.

It was a thing of darkness, punctuated by the staccato rhythm of orange bolts at the periphery. But things were different in the middle, where it all began.

Only a few short miles away, a nude man in desperate need of a tan stood next to a hazy, outlined version of himself. They had spent the last several minutes discussing the man's audacious plan, and while they both knew it wasn't perfect, it had a good chance of success.

As the inescapable pressure and soundless thunder of kinetic lightning flashed around them, they finally came to a decision.

"Five minutes," David said as he looked at Walker. His vague body structure had firmed up as he continued to shield his partner whenever the lightning approached. The reflection looked around and repeated, "I think it'll work if we only use five minutes."

"You're worried about the philosophical ramifications again?"

"That, and I don't think they'll survive much longer."

Walker nodded, his face shifting from one of anxiety to something more steady. There was a very short timeframe in which they could get everything done. Already, David's body was marked and burnt from the most recent kinetic force applied to him. If they didn't move on things soon, they both knew that David may not survive long enough to help Walker through the next steps.

Walker looked around again, spying a particularly violent storm to his left. Though it seemed to be moving relatively slowly in the chaos all around them, they needed to act right away before it had a chance to get closer. "Okay, let's do it."

"Wait....," David said with a single hand up, "Say the thing."

"...dude," Walker replied with an incredulous expression, "we just need to-"

"No, say the thing. Come on," He gave a large sigh, "we haven't had a lot of fun during all of this. It's all stress and stupidity. Just...just say the thing. You'll appreciate it later, trust me."

"Trust myself."

David smiled, "Just so."

Walker shook his head in defeat, "Fine.....KAGE BUNSHIN NO JUSTU!"

Walker pulled out reflection resources at a high rate of speed, applying them to himself as they needed an incredible amount of doubles for this to work. At first, there were only a few. Then more, and then more again. They'd decided to use a hundred reflections at once, and regardless of what he'd just said, applying the strand to himself took longer than he would like. As he continued to apply the strand, the original Davids pushed off of Walker, spreading themselves out to absorb the hits for their younger brothers.

By the time Walker was done, they'd already lost a few Davids to time or explosions from the overpowering bolts of force in the area. Without thinking about what would happen next, Walker yelled out, commanding his reflections to take the next step, even though they all had the same information.

"Davids! Move toward us! Shell! Shell!"

Every David in the area condensed down at once, surrounding the original and the Creator himself. After a quick jostling, they left only a single opening pointed toward the opposite of the center. Walker placed his feet in the location, using the low-dimensional bodies around him for leverage, and applied the orange power of kinetic energy to them. He decided to apply a little more energy than they likely needed, wisely understanding that as the lightning approached, he would need the extra kinetic force to compensate during their travel.

Feeling the Davids surrounding him tighten their grips as much as possible, Walker pressed down and kicked off of the metaphysical state of the space around him. He heard most of the Davids curse at once, a mixture of his own voice saying, "Shit," "Fuck," and "I'm telling you, Bruce Almighty was accurate." They moved quickly, leaving their original launching point far in the distance as they swallowed up the space toward the beginning of new things.

To an outside observer, watching this scene would have been like eating a bad mushroom while already drunk. A hundred or so naked men held on to each other as small bursts of orange light fired from the back area in pulsing beats. Like kinetic lightning rods, the Davids absorbed the force as best as possible. As each absorbed enough to become metaphysically more present, they would press off of the others, drifting out into the darkness to await their final moments. This was why David and Walker agreed to only give them five minutes of time. If they had hours, and Walker's plan wasn't immediately successful, then they would have left a reflection behind to suffer in agony as they took the universe's punishment for transgressing on this place. By reducing the timed lifespan of his own reflections, Walker found a bit of moral high ground to balance the need to throw versions of himself at their own ultimate doom.

The Davids, each an accurate reflection of the moment Walker had created them, sloughed off of the accelerating ball of humanity at such a high speed that Walker and the original David began to grow increasingly worried.

"We're not going to make it!" David yelled out as his face became exposed to the center of the universe.

"Fuck that, we just need more!" Walker applied an extra portion of force, further increasing their speed at the cost of a few more reflections, sadly losing their grip on the unconventional vehicle.

The closer the naked shell of Walker's approached the center, the more Davids they lost until only a core of twenty remained. Walker observed that the Kinetic energy was no longer moving in straight lines. It now inundated the area so heavily that bolts would strike each other, causing a rapid escalation of broken strand pieces to break out, like shrapnel from an explosion. The effect of the chaotic changes was that Walker's reflections took damage so quickly that he lost four in a single moment.

There was a small bright side to his current situation. In a move many would consider brilliant, Walker had ensured that only the newest Davids could be in the inner area, giving him extra time for the distance needed. Looking behind him briefly, he watched as the last of the Davids poofed out, lost to either time or such a large bolt of kinetic energy that it destroyed them on the spot.

Moving fast, he created one last reflection, and as the new David wrapped him from the front, the original did the same from behind, creating a smaller and tighter shell as they pushed onward. Another solid kick and Walker felt as they passed through something unusual. Staring ahead for the first time, as the reflections had always covered his vision, he caught his first look at the center of a nascent universe.

Within the formerly empty darkness was light….and something else besides. Walker didn’t know what came over him at that moment. Whether it was the awe of being at the center of an entire universe, the simple idea that he had created this, or perhaps the fact that he had forgotten to breathe from his bag for quite some time. But either way, something established itself within him that was impossible to truly describe.

The cosmic nexus before him wasn’t a singular anomaly. There was no black hole or echoes of creation, violating the very fabric of reality. Instead, it was a blur of broken lights and greyscale moments. The darkness encircling the area pulsed from a combination of lights, casting newly created shadows that seemed to go on forever. Amidst the chaos of the profound sight, he heard the whispers of an elusive voice asking him to help, begging and pleading for assistance.

The Creator gazed not into a void but into the direct opposite. All shadows are created by a bright and shining light, and this universe was no different. The dark expanse of space heralded from this one singular soul, spreading itself as far as it could possibly reach, always attempting for the beyond.

In that fleeting moment of revelation, where the cosmic wall was dearly parted, Walker glimpsed an impossible idea. The voice was certainly the soul all around him, and something else.

It was still dying.

With the heavy weight of responsibility lying on him, he understood what was happening. The universal soul looked like a solid white pillar. A beacon lit from within. Near the center of the light, just to the right of the middle, a tiny fleck of darkness lay, marring the white perfection in front of him. He knew what it was and felt just a small amount of shame.

That was left by the power of his soul, when he’d first punched through this universe to place it elsewhere.

Taking a breath from his bag, he understood what the order to creating universes now included. It was far more simple than it had any right to be. Combine the cosmic resources together to create a Universal strand. Create a hole in the fabric, or system in this case, of the current universe. Insert the new universe within, and voila, you have a new and unattached permanent dimension. But he had done things entirely out of order.

Another grouping of large pulses rang out, but as he watched, he noticed they couldn’t push past his Origin. In a rare moment of unrivaled ego, Walker considered if the power of his own soul was superseding that of the nascent universe. But that wasn’t it. His darkness wasn’t overpowering the universe but corrupting it. Like a small drop of poison in the bloodstream, he was tearing this small universe apart. No matter how much it tried to push away the darkness of Walker’s soul, all it did was further empower it. His bastard godeater corruption was spreading itself.

It…didn’t look good. Walker wasn’t sure how to fix this. Looking at the Davids, the young version poofed out as his timer expended itself, while the older pushed himself to a small distance, also turning from the light in front of them.

“This is fucked,”

“You see it too?” Walker asked.

“Yep. Also, look up then down.”

Walker did so. He found orange crystallized lightning floating above and below them. As each pulse fired out, it would naturally strike the stuck Kinetic energy, and pieces of it would travel with each new expansion.

“Well, shit,” Walker said out loud as he looked at it.

“Yea, boy. That little piece of darkness is probably supposed to be floating like the kinetic energy is, but instead, because of what we are, it’s glued to the universal core.”

“Good name for that,” Walker noted.

David smiled, “Thanks.” They watched as another series of pulses fired, and Walker used his awakened eyes to focus on the darkness marring the core. Ever so slightly, with each pulse, it spread itself just a small amount.

“You see that?” He asked his reflection.

“Nope. What?”

“It’s spreading itself. It’s not fast, don’t get me wrong, but it’s certainly taking over the core.”

David squinted his eyes at the core before shaking his head, “I can’t tell. What do you think would happen if it completed its takeover?”

“Umm, I don’t know,” Walker said with a shrug, “Maybe one giant Godeater….universe…”

His reflection’s eyes widened at that, “Oh, fuck me, man. No, that’s not going to work.”

Walker nodded resolutely. He stared at the darkness of his own soul, a bleeding cancer on an otherwise pure creature, “So, we’re resolved.”

David replied by just looking at him without speaking. He then looked back at the mark on the core, “You know what’s weird? I think I can feel it.”

“Feel what?”

“The mark, man. I don’t know; it’s almost like it’s calling to me.”

“That’s funny,” Walker said as he scratched his cheek, “I feel the same way about the core. I can almost hear it asking for help.”

David looked back at him, “I think I hear the mark doing the same.”

“You don’t think-”

“That I can go over there and get absorbed in too?” David said with a smile, “I mean, I’m going to have a pretty short life, what’s spending my last thirty minutes on a big experiment going to hurt?”

Walker shook his head, “I was going to say, you don’t think that we can control or re-absorb the mark.” He looked back at the core, “But you think you can get in there?”

David shrugged, “Maybe. It doesn’t hurt to try though.”

Walker agreed with him internally. David only had a short period of time left, so why not spend it on an experiment that would give them some certainty? “If you get in there, what are you gonna do?”

“I don’t know. But I’m a reflection of you; I guess I’d just do whatever you would.”

Walker thought about it. Would David’s body become a universe? What would that do to their plans? Would it make things easier or harder? He thought back to why they were here. What the entire purpose of their mission was. They needed to build an A.I., an artificial intelligence. Something that could flawlessly manage his systems and the esoteric and complicated programs he had in mind. Who could run that better than him?

But it also made him consider the negative angle of this whole thing. What would becoming a universe do to a person? The idea of David retaining his humanity was out of the window. It wouldn’t make sense for him to think that way anymore. And what would happen when he started punching gaps in for new systems? Would having David’s personality, which was just a reflection of Walker’s own, fuck everything up?

The magnitude of it. Becoming a universe. He mentally grappled with the idea. Not to mention, they’d come to this immediate space to use the Cosmic Life Engine. Something that would spread uncontrolled life throughout a new universe. What would that do to a universe that wasn’t really a universe at all? Rather, it was an extension of his own personality. One that had been expanded to fit boundless space all at once.

He wasn’t sure.

He looked over at David, who continued to float in the darkness of space, waiting for his response. He knew what his own thoughts would be at this moment. His life was about to go poof, so why not spend it doing something that mattered? And if it continued in a new and extraordinary way, why not?

For better or worse, they had to try. Leaving the mark on the core was a recipe for certain doom. Who knew what a universe inundated with the Godeater parasite would do? It’d likely start to spread itself, hunting down any other universe with even a hint of the Awakened. That included his own. There weren’t a lot of options here.

Making his decision, he threw a thumbs up at his reflection, “Go ahead man, and good luck.”

David gave him a slanted grin, “Can I ask a favor?”

Walker replied with an easy answer, “Of course.”

“Can you throw me at it?” He gave a big laugh, “I can’t exactly do that myself.”

Walker smiled and grabbed his extended arm. Placing a minuscule amount of kinetic energy into the bottom of his arms, he rotated his body, holding onto his reflection as he did so. After a couple of spins, he pushed the last of his resources into the throw, then canceled out his rotation with a quick burst, causing him to float just a little further away from the action.

“You got this man!” He yelled out, watching his own nude form float through space toward the shining white core.

“I know it!” David replied, arms and legs spread out in a star as he floated toward the beginning of a new universe. However, as he started to get closer, Walker watched as parts of him started to ripple.

His reflection seemed to notice as well. David tried to turn his head, but he had no force or inertia to do so. Instead, he yelled back, his voice sounding thin and from a long ways away, “The space is too condensed! It won’t work for me! Use a new refl-”

With a pop, David faded away from sight before getting closer than a mile to the core.

“Use a new refl…oh.” Walker created a new reflection, pondering for perhaps the hundredth time if there was a better way to do this. A new David popped up, the outline of his figure seeming almost transparent, and extended an arm. Reaching forward, Walker firmly grasped his hand and did another spinning throw. When he settled from canceling out his inertia a second time, he was even further away, as he’d pushed far more force into the throw after the first time.

A naked Walker, arms and legs spread to the vastness of space, streaked toward the disturbed core of the universe. Walker watched as the same ripples he’d seen with the last David occurred; however, this time it was different. Before, it seemed like it was crushing the reflection's body, but now it almost looked like it had trouble gaining hold of him. Pondering on the solidity of the metaphysical realm, he almost missed when David grew close to the core.

The naked reflection suddenly and without warning sped up. His body bunched together, arms and legs snapped straight, and he shot forward at a speed that was almost impossible to view. Walker just caught a glimpse of David about to crash into the center of the core when the darkness of his soul staining it seemed to reach out and pull him in.

A moment later, a huge pulse of darkness erupted inside the core, rather than the standard forms he’d seen emerge in the past. Screaming exploded from everywhere around him, a voice keening for something he could never understand before the mark on the core began to expand. Quickly and with no mercy, the black mark soon swallowed the bottom of the white core, before it reached up and took the top half as well.

Walker felt an immense amount of pressure strike his body. Feeling something leak from his eyes, he reached up and touched them, coming away with a streak of darkness that quickly sucked itself toward the now fully corrupted core.

“Oh, fuck me!” Walker yelled out.

Applying the kinetic strand to his feet, he tried to kick away from the overwhelming darkness before him. But as he kicked off, space expanded directly in front of him. An odd feeling reached him, making it seem like he was running against a treadmill with nowhere to go.

Looking back, some of the droplets, parts of his soul, fell from his face and flew toward the dark core behind him. He didn’t have long to look as he continued to push, kick, and do everything in his power to get away from the Godeater core. But it was to no avail. The further he tried to move, the more space warped to send him right back to where he was.

The pressure increased twofold, causing some of the veins on his hands and arms to burst. Walker looked down and found the blood dripping from his hands to hold a black tint as his soul mixed with it. Turning around fully, he pushed kinetic force into his feet and tried to kick against the pull.

“I’m not going to die like this!” Walker screamed out as he felt his body get weaker, “No! I’ll die when I’m old. When Symphony is in a place to take care of itself! Not before!”

He kicked a few more times, pushing with all of his might and as many kinetic resources as he felt he could handle. When that didn’t work, he tried to use his minor teleportation gate, but he felt space change again. Like it was locking down in the area, allowing nothing to move. When the gate couldn’t open, the lock lifted, and the pressure returned.

Breathing heavily, Walker looked back at the core, and that’s when he noticed a change. To just the right of the middle, right where the original mark had been, a new color was spreading.

Green.

A deep forest green. The same color of Walker’s original soul, from before the Godeater parasite infected him. The darkness covering the core began to flake off as it started its own takeover. Pieces of the parasite burned, creating a small ash cloud around the quickly gaining color. It wasn’t long before it took over a quarter of the core, causing the pressure around Walker to drop by a large amount.

Walker took the last breath from his bag, the amount far less than he needed, and he floated in the darkness of space as the power of his original soul fought back against the Godeater program itself.

The more it gained, the faster it moved, and with one last skip toward the top, the final darkness of the parasite burned away to the green which enfolded it.

A moment later, the pressure disappeared, and Walker felt something else surround him. This time, instead of a whisper, he heard a very clear voice.

“Hey bud, how you feeling?”