Far beyond earth, in the unforgiving chasm of deep space, hours shift either in good or bad. It was very easy to make a clock on that basis, so everyone had one. It looked something like this:
What happens in these hours, or rather what dictates them bad or good, shifts daily between the perspectives of all cosmic species. The human good and bad was June 21st. The Beltlogers’ was October 4th. The Denebs’ was February 11th.
And so on.
That wasn’t very easy to calculate. It took all the nuclear reactors in the world to churn the information and relay the sum to SATAN. Satan was a computer. A huge, very smart computer. A mere coincidence; its name was an acronym. It stood for Solidify And Tantalize All Numbers.
It did what all other computers didn’t, or were afraid of doing: it beat the shit out of numbers, and solidified their cries of help in the form of stone tablets. Absolute truths were easy to find out now, but let us not talk about that now.
It was the good hour.
Everyone was standing behind a white wall. Staring still above a floor checkered black.
“Observe / Perceive” scoffed Meshael, “And hence no longer / but rather / a blinding white.” She was twelve meters tall and had molten cheese for hair. It was elastic to heat and shrunk in the absence of it. She looked almost bald now, it was very cold in deep space.
“Everything is essentially that, Mesheal. A dead end, beginning, whatever.” Replied Abdulaziz lethargically, adjusting his shoulders to his wings. He was a beautiful fly, and very cynical for his own sake. “Your cheese, it’s retracting inside to under your skin, it’s ending. Your poems about pizza, they’re all decaying. Dead, dead, dead.” He followed, but she wasn’t listening. As she was very tall and cheese covered her ears.
“Listen, Allah saves us all, brothers it might look like a dead end, but it’s a white wall. A sign!” Cried Sara; a sky in human form. Clouds were her medium of facial expressions, they transitioned back in forth between colors and shapes to illustrate her moods. Very calm; her skies were clear. “Allah akbar if we wait akhi praise be allah we might find a solution be diligent brother Allah is there for you pray for salvation and it’ll come.”
It was the good hour, but no one really knew what good the Qeyls considered. No one really cared, not a bit. The alien good and bad were almost always harmless to humans. For example, a pebble turning over in Mars might shatter the entire glass world of the Uphdi, but means nothing to humans. A meteor rolling over the fabric of space might shake off the dead, confining shells of the Amuzhe, granting them rebirth, but means nothing to humans. As it was arbitrary, there were nonetheless bizarre events, and one was slowly becoming. So it was, a conscious-shattering beast emerged from a nearby planet, it was huge, a cockroach with two human grins emanating from its body.
They kept its body whirling with every sarcastic gust of air, and so when he saw the bunch it stayed still a while, taking it all in, then started roaring with laughter. It went away drilling in high speed the nearby stars, its teeth protruding they acted as a combing tool, devouring the stars’ essence.
“All this I cannot bear to witness any longer.” It was Fahad this time. Black as tar and elongated as if he was a wormhole, he was the largest of the bunch, his mouth was on the inside, the inner surface of the tube. His head and eyes on the top. Naturally, everything he said was distributed equally in space. You could never locate his voice or whereabouts, as if he was always in a transitional state of existence, albeit physically visible through striped white lines. “I must return home.” And so poof! he went.
“You… YOU MOTHERFUCKER. MY TEA!!!!!!! APOSUJFPW THKLFJHS GPI2Y3-945″ Blurted Shaima The Female. She was mad as hell. She needs tea. How else could she bear all her children, all 666? Each the size of a knuckle, they climbed her up and down, messing her hair and glasses, crying inside her inner ear. “Shaima, mother, Paul McCartney, he’s a shitdick. Haha.” “FUCK OFF, 472. I SWEAR.” “Swear what, mother? My brothers will give you hell if you do anything to me, you know that. Haha. Beware, haha.”
“I’ll get your tea.” There was a soft hum, close to a melody. “Give me a few seconds.” It was Alnoory. No one knew her form, and no one was sure she existed. She was there, and her voice dictated she was a thing. Enveloping and encompassing. So very vast and extending. “There you go.” She handed a tea mug over to Shaima, it was soaked and dripping with water, almost as if retrieved from a well. Everything Alnoory presented to the physical world had this state imposed on it: drenched in water.
“And in this time and space / and in this space / how can I / or must we / act.” Sneered Meshael again, she was annoyed. Very annoyed. They had come here for a reason, that is with the aid of thirty men in medieval armor, fit with laser guns and balloons. It was Sara’s idea, the balloons. “So when they die, they would be lost in my skies. Allah forever.”
So it goes.
-*-
All wars had stopped. There weren’t any back on earth. All violence. Everything stopped. Everyone was tired from how the weapons got dull, and how the action was the same. There was no thrill in death nor in murder, it was all boring and mundane. Nothing excited anyone anymore and everyone sat alone. It started exactly a lifetime ago, exactly that, and it was the working of a man that called himself ii z. Few knew who he was and what he did. Some did, some spared by his actions did.
Those were the bunch in outer space.
And when asked about him, they all answered the same.
“I recall when I first met him. I do. He was blank. The objective meaning of blank. And it was surrendering. I do not know myself what I mean, but he was the highest knowledge attainable in that word.”
“He surpassed reality in presenting better forms, better media and creative works. He molded our physical perception to where it was so easy to surpass even our dream-worlds. He replaced wars with one film, and poetry altogether with one book. Music throughout the ages, all spectra with a hum, sports with a unique short-lasting motion of his body—carried out once. It was all what humans needed, core of emotions, a labyrinth of intricate understanding. Causes and purposes stopped—admiration, cognitive processes were not needed anymore.”
“Everyone became as blank as him.”
“And we hate it here.”
“:(“
And so they marched. Walked, strolled and often ran. All six of them onward to outer space and to the very middle of their universe, to where they believed clocks of the Good and Bad tick and click, hoping they would perhaps bathe in acceleration a horrible-and-wonderful exceeding in time-frame that of any human experience, and shattering a preconceived state of all too human joy. Of ii z’s imposed hopelessness.
So they thought.
Nonetheless, there was a wall.
“what do” blurted Shaima fidgeting, her children falling off like scales from her skin. “oh god ja;o t3-0tu please” “Calm down / a transition in-itself invisible / nonetheless be” Replied Meshael not looking at her, but rather the wall. ”Thus figure / hence / why must I think / of climbing / this ominous fortification?” Replied Meshael not looking at her, but rather the wall.
“We don’t.” Spoke the soft hum. “We return.”
“DAMMIT” Cried Sara. “Sorry. Allah forgive me.”
“Yeah, and then what?” Buzzed Abdulaziz. “Then what? What immense turmoil awaits us there. I’m so tired. Fatigue, fatigue, fatigue! My muscles and bones hurt! Why must we return? No we stay. And we try. Something, anything, I don’t want to get back.”
“Then I’ll try.” Replied Alnoory, and stifled.
“It’s alright. I got us through. Calm down.” “Calm down.” Whispered Alnoory again, and so they were inside. The wall was only part of a sphere, and so ever extending it created this illusion of being that, not a shell. Hence they became part of its content, or dwelling with whatever inside. It was a vast room tinted lime green and other shades of that, with two humanoid figures standing still and dead. There was a murmurous noise then another figure came sweeping like an overcasting shadow over the room’s center point.
[Draft ends here, last edited April 29th. Will not be completed.]
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