MISC: Touch the Great Beyond

Andrew Perron pwerdna at gmail.com
Fri Nov 23 12:43:35 PST 2012


So, I was talking to the author of Correspondence From the Goddess and got inspired to write a short story in that universe. So then I did! <3 Enjoy!

----

It was done. Along the great Centaurus arm of the galaxy, the 
concordance of civilizations known as the Project had built a piece of 
cosmic clockwork, made from bright stars and black holes. At the center 
was a hole in space, gaping wide, and through it shone the impossible 
light of another galaxy.

The One was ready. They would pilot the Ship through the excruciatingly 
precise looping arc that would carry it across the vast gulf of 
intergalactic space. Despite the staggering energies committed to the 
Project, the enormous investment of time, it was still incredibly 
dangerous. More than likely, they were only the first brave sentient 
that would be sacrificed in the cause of exploration - but it was a 
cause the One was willing to give their life for.

Amidst the cheering crowds of a thousand worlds, the exotic particle 
engines thrummed to life, carrying the One past the solar system of 
Projectgate, past the energic field that kept the Project safe from the 
things that prey on stars, and into the heart of twisted space.

The One could feel the tug of twined gravity fields. Each molecule of 
their body was attuned to that pull, and it was that that allowed them 
to walk the course up and down and around and through, stepping swiftly 
on feet of shimmering quarks along the shifting spaces. They could feel 
the universe curling in on itself, closer, closer, until the distance 
between Here and There was a single breath...

And then there was a bump, an irregularity, and the One lost hold and 
space spun and time inverted and they weren't There and they weren't 
Here and they were...

Safe.

The Ship rested on a featureless surface in gravity slightly lower than 
the One's birth planet. The cockpit was open, the air a pleasant mix of 
methane and sulfur. A sourceless light filled the air. It was all 
very... comfortable.

Which, all in all, made it far more disturbing. So the One was almost 
glad when something unpleasant intruded; an angry, cuttingly sarcastic 
voice, unmistakably addressing them. "Thank you *so* much for your 
little stunt. I really didn't have enough to do today."

The One turned their head. An alien stood there.

It didn't look like any of the member races of the Project. Solid and 
bipedial, with a soft natural covering and colorful artificial 
coverings over that. Somehow, the One could tell that the white bits 
with the black circles in the middle were visual sense organs, and that 
the being was glaring at them.

"No, no, don't speak. I want to bask in the presence of the most 
MONUMENTAL IDIOT IN THE MILKY WAY."

The One cringed. Their vibratory feelers waved feebly. "Um, I don't 
understand what's going on..."

"That doesn't surprise me!" The being ran what looked like a 
manipulator limb through the mass of brown substance atop its 
structure. "I mean, I thought humans were bad. It's good to know 
there's unintelligent life elsewhere in the universe."

"...who ARE you?"

It shook its cranium and exhaled deeply. "Lydia Devin. Human, from 
Earth. As far as I know, supreme being in the universe. Pleased to meet 
you, I'm sure."

"Supreme..." The One cocked their head, listening to the lack of echo. 
"Am I... dead?"

Lydia let out a half-amused pfft. "Hah! If only it were that easy. No, 
I yanked you into a bubble warp spacetime thingy, because you were 
about to do something that would have been a tremendous headache, and 
believe me, I know from headaches."

"Oh. So... my flight would have been a failure?"

"Failure! Ugh. No, no. I mean, yes, it would've been a fuck-up of truly 
epic proportions, but it wasn't really your fault. I'm just yelling at 
you because it would be too much trouble to yell at every single member 
of your Federation of United Whatevers."

The One carefully lifted themself out of the Ship. Their stability 
discs hit soundlessly on the smooth thing they decided to call 
"ground". "Well. Um, what was it that went wrong?"

Lydia sighed. "You made a big machine to travel between galaxies. 
Swell. Except that when you went in, it scraped across my pretty-much-
omniscent consciousness like a nail down a chalkboard."

"...well, I apologize, but--"

"WHICH, in turn, alerted me to the fact that your little trip was going 
to blow up every star between point A and point B, because your 
duckfucking scientists couldn't be bothered to test this monkeyfucking 
thing before building a full-scale model!"

"...oh." The One cringed a cringe that he hoped would respectfully 
communicate the embarassment of a galactic civilization.

Lydia shook her head. "Look, don't worry about it. I fixed it. Don't 
ask me how I fixed it, I don't understand the math any more than you 
do, but you and anybody else should be able to travel through it 
without blowing anybody up. Except themselves, if they're not careful, 
but that's how it goes."

The One's ingestion canals fluttered in surprise. "That's quite 
generous of you."

"Pfff. Nah, it's just easier than trying to get people to follow a 
warning. Although..." Lydia smirked. "Might as well hammer the message 
in, right?" She snapped her fingers, and

The One was back in the Ship, back above the atmosphere of Projectgate 
Three. The crowds that had cheered the launch gasped (or micturated, or 
photosynthesized) as a great pillar of blinding multicolored light 
stabbed through the clouds to the launch pad and the Ship lowered down 
in a scintillating bubble. As it settled on the pad, a great voice 
boomed, "LISTEN TO WHAT THIS GUY HAS TO SAY. SERIOUSLY, I'M NOT GOING 
TO SAY IT AGAIN." Then the light vanished.

The One stepped out. After a moment of befuddled silence, the people 
rushed them. The head of the commsyndicate pointed a listening wand 
toward them and said, "What happened?"

The One paused. How to explain the fact that a cosmic being had 
prevented them from making a cosmic mistake? That someone was out 
there, and they seemed to begrudgingly, impatiently care?

The One leaned forward. "Well... I met God. She was... nice?"

----

Andrew "NO .SIG MAN" "Juan" Perron, shine on~


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