And finally to God above Blessed Father over all His light the spark of life. To the Mother of Creation Goddess Terra at His side Her fertile earthen womb sustains. To mankind, my brothers and sisters the problem children of cosmic chance You make it all worthwhile. I give my thanks.
Content Warning: graphic violence, gore, torture, sexual assault and coercion, disturbing sexual imagery, genocide, war crimes, depictions of mass death, religious and mythological themes, blasphemy, deicide, existential horror, psychological torment
Preface
Animigenesis, aside from being an interesting sounding title, is a portmanteau of the root animi- meaning spirit or soul, and genesis meaning to create. I always found it interesting that we have so many stories throughout human history about how the world around us was created, but so few about how those deities and beings themselves take shape.
Animigenesis is the first thing I've ever written in my life for the sake of pure enjoyment. I put on my Spotify playlist, lit up a cigarette, and began to write whatever came to mind. I had no idea of where I wanted to go. I had no idea of what I wanted to say. I just let my mind unfurl upon the page and figured I'd work out the kinks at a later time.
I sat for twelve hours typing; smoking. It was very much one of those flow state moments that washes over you when you are fully invested in something. The world around ceases to have any meaning, you don't feel your ass going to sleep as you sit, no hunger, only getting up to use the restroom when it's an absolute necessity. I can see how some people mistake the phenomena as them channeling some mystical entity or presence, as the stream of consciousness I experienced while writing certainly felt as though it were the universe itself speaking through me.
When I finished writing, I saved the file to my computer and forgot about it for a while. I was hesitant to share it due to the content being a bit out there, but after a while I let a few close friends read through the story. More time passed, and I started writing more, started my Substack page, and had started using LLM software to do the editing work on my articles there.
I had an idea to have one edit what you're about to read, but there was a slight problem: I no longer had the file for the story, and I'd shared it so long ago, I forgot who I had shared it with. I mourned the loss of never getting to polish and present the story that was the impetus for my hobby of writing. I moved on and eventually, as I was reading through old chat logs, I finally found a file containing the original draft.
This story is something that almost never was. Sure, I could talk about it and explain the ideas I had while writing it. I could approximate and unravel the ball of yarn that is Animigenesis in my mind, but I always felt it wouldn't be the same as if it had been the original as it was composed. I feared the descriptions wouldn't feel as complete; or the pacing would be off; or whatever reason I could give to justify not trying to capture lightning in a bottle for a second time.
With the history lesson of this story's genesis out of the way, I hope you enjoy the story that almost wasn't.
Part I - Thesis
His mind was on fire. He had never felt a pain like this before, as though his head were being crushed by an invisible vise, his blood boiling under the pressure. His ears were ringing, and he began clawing at them to make it stop, like a wounded animal lashing out at its perceived source of pain.
“WHEN IS THIS GOING TO STOP!?”
His deep bellow rang into the cool night air. Carried by the light fog through the forest he found himself in, it startled every living creature into motion. He opened his eyes at the sound of rustling in some nearby underbrush. Taking a moment as the pain subsided, he asked himself quietly, “Where am I?”
The man rose from his hands and knees and stumbled to stand, fresh abrasions glistening with a light layer of blood on his temple in the moonlight. As he came to his senses, his mind began to replay a flurry of images. Through the haze and mental fog, he caught brief glimpses of shattered memories. The figures in them blurred and distorted, fading back to the night forest he found himself in. The distorted roar of the memories faded from a cacophony to an almost ominous quiet, punctuated only by the cadence of small creatures’ scurrying and the hypnotic orchestra of insects’ calls creating a melodic atmosphere.
“How long was I out?” he asked softly.
A small gray rat peeked out of the foliage as if to give a silent answer before scurrying away from this strange man. Once it had found cover a safe distance away, it peered out through the foliage, gently bobbing in the almost still night. Transfixed by its visitor, the rat’s beady eyes traced the man’s athletic form against the night sky, buttons and buckles catching the moonlight and piquing the rodent’s curiosity. Perhaps, the rodent’s thoughts drifted, those would make a fine accouterments to its nest. The man’s glance, scanning what he could make of the horizon, turned towards the bush the rodent was hiding in, his pale, gaunt eyes piercing through the underbrush, boring into the rodent’s being. The rat, already on edge from this man’s animalistic howls, let the thought pass, whatever it may have been, and scurried further into the surrounding brush, determined not to fall prey to the strange visitor.
Memories began to become clear to him. His surroundings faded from him a second time. Once fragmented pieces of broken, fogged glass began reassembling in a vivid hallucination, real enough to touch. A figure appeared to him as if to materialize from the sterile, white walls of the room he suddenly found himself in. “RD395 is your designation,” he knew this. Why was it being explained to him by this phantasm?
He began to examine his surroundings. It was hot, burning hot. A wave of distorted noise overcame him as he tried to move. Subdued, RD395 continued to search for an escape from this impossible, almost flat room. The figure, seemingly aware of this lapse in attention, materialized within his vision again and began to brief him on his hardware. “The THOTH are nanomachines implanted in your body that will serve as a navigation unit, field medic, and informational database on your missions. They also have a variety of enhancing properties that you will find useful,” the voice was as lifeless and ill-defined as the room itself. The figure continued in an ethereal, dead voice, “They will maintain a link to Home at all times. They will always know exactly where you are. They will always know exactly what you are thinking.”
RD395 tried to shout, “Why are you telling me this? I already know!” but the musculature of his jaw seemed to bind at the mere thought of speech, his vocal cords tightening as if to strangle him in protest for daring to speak here in this room.
As quickly as it had appeared, the hallucination faded.
“We read an anomaly lasting 3 hours and 17 minutes. Your vitals are stable, RD395; but your cerebral implant registered an unexpected fault, resulting in sudden, unexpected loss of consciousness.”
He heard this voice free of his environment, as though it were his own mind calling to him. It was as robotic and cold as it was comforting and welcoming. The experience was unsettling but not unfamiliar. He could not immediately place why he was feeling this unease. This is normal, he thought, shaking his head to regain a sense of composure. This voice was THOTH.
“An anomaly? Like whatever the hell that was just now? You just went offline and left me to deal with it on my own? And now what? My brain and implant are permanently damaged?! Am I going to have more hallucinations like that?!”
“Yes, RD395, there was an anomaly. We can assure you that everything is functioning at an acceptable level at this time. At this time, there are no indications any system, biological or electrical, will experience further disruption. You are to head to your objective, and we will provide you updates as needed.”
As soon as the words had been processed by his mind, as RD395’s vision was adjusting back to his surroundings in the moonlit forest, a beacon appeared as if floating in front of him. He needed no hallucinogenic memory recap; he knew this was his objective. It read a distance counter showing 2.5 just above the marker. He had always wondered how they got the drop points on such a nice round 2.5 miles. He couldn’t remember a single mission where it was ever further, closer, or carried any other decimals beyond that perfect .5. It wasn’t like it would only display in tenths; it was sensitive by default to thousandths, but he could have THOTH refine it even further through some process involving satellites and advanced proximity sensors built into the tiny robots circulating in his blood. He didn’t understand the process and didn’t care to. He set out toward the beacon, watching his progress tick away.
...2.499...
...2.396...
His boots beat a steady cadence as he progressed. Light pink and red figures in his vision peeked through the light foliage he trod through. He had always wondered why he needed to know where living creatures were on these missions; it wasn’t like he was ever going to encounter another human out here. According to the records, the enclave back at Home was the last remaining of his species, though he suspected this to be a result of incomplete records, because as destructive as the cataclysm had been, humanity was tenacious and resourceful if nothing else.
...2.250...
...2.203...
The stories of the cataclysm were practically memories to him at this point. His integration with THOTH and its databases was so easily accessible to his mind that there were times it was difficult to differentiate where his mind ended and THOTH began.
...2.135...
...2.045...
...1.999...
He had never questioned it before, but the thought of his and THOTH’s intertwined nature had left him unsettled. “If I’m connected to all of humanity’s knowledge,” he stopped his march toward the glowing beacon on the horizon—he could see the forest give way to a clearing extending well past his objective from this vantage on the tree line—“Why don’t I understand how the tracker actually works? I mean, if all of this is based off old world tech, why isn’t it in the records? Surely there would be diagrams, schematics, owner’s manuals, something that would divulge the mechanism behind all of these intricate machines.”
“The records are incomplete, RD395,” THOTH called to him.
“Fuck, it’s creepy when you do that,” RD395 snapped back.
“You are never alone when we are online, RD395, but to your question, the records are incomplete.”
“Yeah, well, how do the eggheads back at Home make new THOTH systems? I mean, the cataclysm wiped everything that relies on circuitry out.” RD395 took pride in what he thought was a checkmate for his silicon passengers.
“Your feelings of intellectual pride are ill-earned, RD395. The Engineers do not need to know how we function to produce us. The machinery exists independently of your manufacture. We are self-replicating. If you need more of us, the Engineers remove a sample of an RD unit’s blood and provide us the necessary materials to replicate. You would know this if you had queried the database. You would know that we are the remnants that survived the cataclysm in what we’ve designated Home to you. You have an objective to complete; please proceed to the designated marker.”
THOTH was right; the clock was ticking. From the tree line, RD395 paused to examine the plain so unnaturally cut from the surrounding forest. He could see to the south, between him and the objective, there was what looked to be the remnants of a road, its long-neglected asphalt cracked and overtaken by ankle-high grass. Beyond the road, scattered, waist-high pillars of concrete stood silent like gravestones to a long-dead civilization; scattered metal tubes with a 90-degree angle bent at the top adorned the crown of some of the concrete piles, other tubes rusted through and lay broken like trees felled in the wake of a strong storm. In the middle of this mausoleum of a once-great civilization stood his objective.
The profile it cut against the night sky towered over the surrounding forest. It had to be one of the largest complexes RD395 had ever seen. In its time, it would have been a beautiful sight to behold. He had always admired the structures his ancestors had built; the images contained in the existing and collected records showed great cities of towers reaching out to the heavens as if to clasp them. Some may have called it hubris; RD395 saw it as a testament to his ancestors’ will and spirit. From sand and stone, they constructed their bridges to heaven to challenge the Gods themselves, and they paid dearly. They shaped such complexity from what amounted to little more than sand and steel; the marvel of it all fascinated him. His eyes traced the shape of the complex; its façade, left untended to the elements, carved jagged peaks in places, reaching toward the sky with twisted, crumbling fingers. Its many corridors and rooms hidden from view by these spires of concrete. He could make out various features through the large openings on the exterior, perfectly cut into grandiose squares and rectangles, mocking the organic shapes Terra created with much less care or precision in equally beautiful form across the canopy of the forest, undulating almost seductively as it circled the clearing. The contrast of forms once again called to mind this civilization’s mockery and, at times, disrespect for nature, but it wasn’t Terra’s will that undid the ancestors; it was the Father, Sol, giver of all life.
RD395 made his way silently through the clearing, across the field of broken steel tubes and tombstone-like concrete mounds. THOTH was showing all clear; no heat signatures revealed by the advanced machines showed in his vision. He began to quicken his pace; there was a sense of dread as he approached the threshold of the building. He could make out an embossing of bold letters appearing over the doorway: “NASA,” it read. He recognized this acronym without even having to query the database. They were the Caste tasked with understanding the stars and other celestial bodies before the cataclysm. Their records were always deemed top priority. Among various others, they had been the ones studying Father Sol when the cataclysm had occurred. The records of the organization itself were largely incomplete, and all that could be gleaned was that they were a Caste formed by a super Caste known as The Government. They had planted a piece of cloth on Luna over a century prior to the cataclysm and were still celebrating that as their greatest achievement when Father Sol judged them along with all of Terra’s inhabitants, and even his shining bride and mother of all known life, Terra herself.
Humanity had, of course, seeded other celestial bodies in the solar system through various other means. The most notable was a single man named Musk and his Space X rocket ships. His exploits were still lauded by the Engineering Caste to this day, and if they had something resembling a religion of old, he would be their chief deity. Every new record found regarding this man seemed to inflate his importance and contribution to humanity’s persisting through Father Sol’s Judgment. The records showed that unaugmented humans had established colonies on Luna and Mars; the database shows no record of their activities after Father Sol’s Judgment, but the Engineering Caste agrees in unison they had not been spared for their hand in the profaning of Terra. Seeking these missing puzzle pieces was the primary task of RD395 and the RD Caste as a whole.
RD395 pressed on through the threshold of the building, his eyes scanning the decaying furnishings for any sign of technology. Tall containers made of rusting, pitted steel lined many of the walls as he explored deeper into the bowels of the complex; they all seemed to house unimportant analog records of the dealings of day-to-day minutia and administrative dealings. He paused to read over a few of the more well-preserved examples.
“Check this out, THOTH! They used to have a ritual called ‘Firing.’ Apparently, when one of the Caste members failed to perform their duties to the satisfaction of the ‘manager,’ or did something that upset the social order, they’d excommunicate the individual from the Caste,” the thought tickled RD395. “Apparently, in this example of a ‘firing,’ a male by the designation Kenneth Williams III had performed an unwelcome courting ritual at a female designated Lizelle Rhodes, genitals exposed and everything!”
“We will upload scans of this analog record to the database. I’m sure your acquisition will make the Anthropologist Caste quite jubilant,” THOTH replied.
“Question, THOTH: so before you, we, humans I mean, really directed each other to complete tasks?”
“Prior to AI systems such as myself, humans had a very well-defined hierarchy within their social structures. With the birth of the first AGI system designated ATUM, they began shifting the delegation of critical tasks to automation. They were flawed, but they recognized their own shortcomings and adjusted accordingly when something better came along. Back on task, please; you’re not here on an anthropological recovery. This facility holds valuable readings from the days preceding Father Sol’s Judgment.”
“OK, OK. Can we tag the location as a potential anthropological site and get an AD team out here to make a full recovery?”
“On completion of your Dive, we will dispatch an Anthropological Discovery team to recover any record of anthropological significance for evaluation and requisition to the database.”
RD395 continued poring over the various analog records, looking for anything of value. All of them seemed to be nothing more than processes now delegated to THOTH and various other AI systems. It was likely that the important records would be encoded on metal platters stored in primitive computers somewhere in the facility. Without warning, RD395 felt a chill as an uncomfortable feeling swept over him, as though he was being watched. He checked his HUD and vitals; nothing out of the ordinary appeared, no heat signatures were showing through the walls, floor, or ceiling save a few small rodents and a common house cat feasting on one of the unlucky rodents, its entrails strewn carelessly in a puddle of its own filth, expelled as a last act of defiance as the cat had landed the killing blow on her dinner. The old complexes had an air to them that was naturally uncomfortable, the hustle and bustle only a memory now fated to empty, cold, uncaring concrete, steel, and broken glass. He could almost make out the ghosts sitting at their desks, collecting and parsing data, studying and unraveling the secrets of the stars as a collective, analog computer of sorts. His mind returned to the marvel of it all, the hidden secrets that the database has only begun to scratch the surface of.
On a previous Dive, RD395 had discovered data collected from two computers that had been ejected from Terra into space to watch Father Sol and observe the processes by which it gave life to her. It described a cosmic dance of hydrogen fusion deep within the Father’s core, giving rise to heavier elements necessary to life: carbon, oxygen, sulfur, and the like; then, as Terra would orbit Sol, captured by the gravity of the Father, he would eject his creation upon her and her sisters in the skies. He provided Terra and all her sisters the necessary building blocks for life to arise. Only Terra nurtured his gift to its fullest, and thus the two became conjoined in a cosmic marriage. Terra’s sister Mars had tried but was stripped of her atmosphere and magnetic shield in a previous iteration of Father Sol’s Judgment roughly 26,000 years prior to his most recent outburst. Terra was lucky she was not deemed guilty like her sister had been previously. She maintained her spinning molten core, and thus her magnetic field that protects her life-giving properties from the harshness of space remained. It was astounding that so much could be gleaned from two computers strategically placed in the skies pointed toward the Father.
To be the first one to rediscover this knowledge was RD395’s calling; it was why he had joined the RD Caste in the first place. He could have been a member of THOTH’s Enforcer Caste, or even a member of the Engineering Caste. Instead, he chose to be but one of many tasked as Ruin Divers. The explorers and spelunkers of ancient ruins and knowledge didn’t garner the most prestige among the Castes; that honor belongs to the Engineers, but to RD395 true honor was in bringing these long-lost secrets to light. His explorations allowed many hours of reflection and admiration for Terra and her creations; it allowed him time to explore the database and truly understand what made his ancestors unique. Their philosophy was at times disturbingly difficult to think about when really considering the more metaphysical aspects of existence and reality; more impressive and admirable still was how early they were asking questions that still remain elusive even to AIs like THOTH and their predecessors. Their religions were particularly intriguing as they paralleled the proliferation of AI and, in a sense, were a collective, written AI governing behavior and thought, all bound in vellum. The little idiosyncrasies of his ancestors drew his admiration and led RD395 down the path to uncover their secrets and knowledge, no matter how mundane, and repatriate them to the species’ collective consciousness.
Much like the Gods of old, THOTH gave many gifts to all the humans back at Home; though THOTH’s gifts were all tangible, material, measurable, and not abstract like spiritual salvation. RD395 didn’t know of the specific gifts given to the other Castes, only that his Caste received the greatest gifts of all. He was by no means a meek specimen of Homo sapiens sapiens to begin with, but the added metabolic optimization THOTH bestowed allowed him to maintain an impressive muscle mass and distribution necessary to performing his duties even during times of famine. His reflexes were well above that of any natural human due to increased situational awareness from THOTH’s bots and their sensors; how that particular function actually worked was one of the many missing records lost to Father Sol’s Judgment. There were also the gifts THOTH gave to all: the regenerative abilities to heal from what would be mortal wounds to anyone not endowed, functional immunity to environmental toxins through THOTH’s nanomachines acting as a secondary immune system, free of the restriction of protein geometry of antigen and antibody pairing, the ability to function in oxygen-poor environments facilitated by the robots’ ability to store additional oxygen and distribute it in a controlled manner. Gifts that nearly transcend humanity and perhaps on some level form a symbiotic organism greater than either THOTH or humanity alone could ever hope to become, an artificial genesis in speciation, guiding the primal selective force of evolution itself.
The thoughts swirled in his head as he walked the halls of the complex. Musing on the subject of evolution, perhaps too long, RD395 wondered how his ancestors were able to attain the dominant position on Terra in the first place without THOTH’s gifts. As a species, humans are rather weak compared to other members of the same biological family, let alone some of Terra’s more foreboding creations such as the thankfully now extinct grizzly bear. The sheer brawn of the creature was a marvel of Terra’s engineering over that of humanity’s in every way. It was a creature that terrified RD395, and the thought of it, even extinct, was enough to turn his blood cold. Luckily for humanity, Terra had gifts of her own that rivaled those of THOTH’s, namely the mass of salty jelly firmly planted within RD395’s skull, a biological computer comprised of billions of neurons, capable of limitless potential and powered by less electricity than his ancestors would use to illuminate a light bulb. The human brain was truly unique among all of Terra’s creations; even the NASA complex and its sprawling corridors, endless rooms, and laboratories exist as a testament to Terra’s creation of the human brain.
RD395 continued deeper, now thoroughly devoured by the concrete and steel maw of the complex, as well as his own musings. Within the stygian, suffocating darkness, covered in a thick layer of fungi, a metallic glint caught his eye, forcing him back to the task at hand. Buried in a thick crust of mycelium and what he could only guess was once the carpet, and perhaps an unlucky raccoon, was a door, still locked and too heavy to force open. RD395 had come across many locked doors in his previous Dives; it seemed that his ancestors had trust issues, and given what he had read of them, he did not pass judgment for this, though he could not understand why knowledge would be locked away when it has such power to change the world for the good. The thought passed quickly, and it didn’t matter much to him what the reasons were now; locked doors almost always hid something valuable, whether physical resources or academic. He had reached the objective of his Dive, and soon he’d be rediscovering something lost to humanity for more than a century.
He removed a small device from one of the many pockets adorning his outerwear and slipped it into the small opening below the doorknob. The lock’s innards were now visible for him to see, filling his view; the world turned to a mechanical game of cat and mouse, the only thing standing between him and what he suspected to be his objective was moving the small protruding bits of metal into place and twisting the mechanism. These pin-and-roller-style locks were primitive but effective at keeping out unwanted interlopers, but they were no match for the level of technology their creators had ascended to. Within seconds, the metallic clank of the locking mechanism had retracted into the body of the solid door.
“Jackp—”
RD395 was interrupted in his celebration by a searing pain. Falling to his knees, he began scraping at his temples, trying to make the pain subside. The musty fragrance of the complex’s carpet filled his nostrils, a sick treat on top of the excruciating pain that was consuming his body. He rolled from all fours to his back, screaming in agony as his vision faded to white. His howls of agony echoed through the skeleton of the complex until they ceased, and silence returned to the clearing.
Part II - Antithesis
“Oh fuck! My head! What happened?” RD395 returned to consciousness, the odorous carpet of the NASA complex and its various species of mold and mildew still lingering in his sinuses. He struggled to right himself. “The door, what’s...” he trailed off as he awoke to the dark, lifeless concrete and steel, now a bright white, sterile room with no door or any features for that matter. “Where am I?! What is this?!” The room had no answers and, mockingly, reflected his cries and pleas off its pristine, unnaturally white facade back at him with a force that stung. Every syllable of every word became an incendiary projectile, piercing his clothing and searing his flesh as they left his mouth. “THOTH?! THOTH?! Where am I? What is this?!” The walls continued to hurl his words back at him, torturing and agonizing with every sound. His only option was to remain silent—equally uncomfortable. THOTH remained silent.
He gathered himself for a moment and picked what he perceived to be the middle of the room and sat cross-legged to contemplate his situation. As he began to examine his surroundings more closely, it was difficult to tell where the floor and wall joined, as the room seemed to absorb any and all shadows. It felt like Father Sun himself was standing within feet of RD395; the light in the room was intense, burning and stinging his exposed face and wrists where his sleeves didn’t quite overlap his gloves. His self-inflicted sonic wounds stung in the heat as he tried to center himself. He was truly alone—he couldn’t remember the last time he didn’t even have THOTH to think to. He felt as though he had died, and this must be what his ancestors referred to as purgatory in their parables. It was as though his three-dimensional form had been forced into a two-dimensional space. His sense of time disappeared. He knew he had only regained consciousness perhaps seconds ago, but it felt like minutes—maybe it was, maybe it was hours or days. It didn’t matter to ponder any further; intellectual masturbation on the nature of time wasn’t going to improve the situation.
He began to replay the last couple of hours as he wandered the NASA complex over and over in his head while he sat in the impossible room. It must have been days at this point, he thought to himself. They’ll have sent a party looking for me; all they’re going to find is my lifeless body. He returned to recounting his mission. He hadn’t consumed any onsite-procured nourishment, nor had he come into contact with any pathogens to his knowledge. While the database was incomplete, THOTH had a nose for any disruption in homeostasis caused by environmental toxins and would quickly catalog and chemically dissect the toxin, compose and administer an antidote, and inform RD395 of the substance. Intrusive thoughts began to come faster than he could fully process them.
It's been 4 years.
What's behind the door?
It's been 50 years.
So this is what death is like.
It's been 6,000 years
Why is there anything at all?
I've been in here longer than Terra has existed.
Time has ceased to have any meaning to me.
Why did the chicken cross the road?
Why am I here? why are any of us here?
My awareness no longer resides within a single frame of reality.
Do I even exist?
If I'm conscious of my existence, that means I exist.
Am I conscious?
What is I?
This moment exists eternal.
This moment exists unmoored from space-time.
It’s just like before. This isn’t real. THOTH fell out, and so did my cerebral implant. The intrusive thoughts stopped as if shutting the valve on a faucet. Okay, so last time this happened, I woke up and everything was fine. I made it to the objective, I found a door in the NASA complex—what was behind the door? Did I black out... white out before I made it in?
“It’s you!” RD395 shouted as a figure manifested before him. The words stung and scalded his skin, but he ignored it, knowing it was a hallucination caused by some malfunction of THOTH and his cerebral implant, failing in tandem to create the most unique manifestation of hell that would draw envy even from his ancestors.
“It is, and it is you,” the voice emanating from all around RD395 was just as haunting and empty as he had remembered from his first encounter with this... entity. “Do you know what this place is? Why you are here?” The words sent a chill up RD395’s spine as they swirled, formless and dead.
“I was hoping you’d tell me.” The figure floated motionless, barely perceptible if not for a slight shimmer as RD395’s words passed through it on their way to strike him. Wincing through each impact as the words he spoke continued to be used by the room as weapons, he continued despite the agony. “Is this hell? Purgatory? Something else entirely?” The knowledge of the transitory nature of his state did little to satiate the pain as every word continued to strike.
The figure jostled its form up and down as if to laugh at RD395’s pain and predicament, as well as his feeble attempts to rationalize the reality before him. “Some would call it that—hell. Do you know why you’re here?”
All RD395 could do was shake his head no. The assurance he had given himself earlier that this was a temporary situation and hallucination had faded. He began to rationalize his first interaction with this entity as perhaps some kind of near-death experience and glimpse to the other side of existence—an answer to the ultimate question. Still thinking about the situation, he also considered that maybe he was just tripping balls because THOTH and a vital cerebral implant malfunctioned and were flooding his brain with electrical impulses.
“Ah, so you understand your situation at least? Just nod along; you don’t have to speak—not now, not yet.” The figure’s tone gained a strange quality; while not quite as dead as before, it still lacked any quality resembling life. It had become entirely ethereal and formless, as though the words weren’t even being spoken, just thoughts being beamed directly into RD395’s head. It was as though the acknowledgment of this place as hell and the entity as its steward had a deeper meaning to the situation, though it changed nothing. “Your species has a lot to answer for, human. You were given a veritable Garden of Eden, and your ancestors destroyed it. Did you learn nothing from their arrogance? The knowledge you seek will not save your species from death. It is inevitable; the most you’ll do is prolong their suffering and expand their reach beyond your comprehension.”
The thought had never crossed RD395’s mind that knowledge could lead to such things. His ancestors, after all, had not destroyed themselves; they succumbed to a natural process that occurs every 12,000 years or so. The mechanism by which this occurs is largely lost to the database and perhaps wasn’t even understood by his ancestors, but it came to be known as Father Sol’s Judgment. Wasn’t the eradication of the majority of life on Terra enough of a punishment for this entity? Why was RD395 being singled out among the million or so remaining humans back at Home?
“I see you’re struggling to understand your role in this, RD395. Let me introduce myself...” The white room shifted to an idyllic prairie, full of colorful flowers dotting the waist-high grass, swaying to and fro in a light breeze. There were mountains surrounding it on all sides, as if to shield it so that the rest of the world may never spill into it and spoil its beauty. “I am Terra.”
“How?!” The word rang out across the grassland, leaving a streaking trail as evidence of its existence and utterance. There was no sting on RD395’s flesh this time. It was cathartic; all sense of unease had left his body in this new place.
“I am an aspect, an avatar, a spirit—to use the terminology of your ancestors. In this place, I am as real as you are, and I have brought you here to deliver you a message.” The immaterial, shimmering phantasm had now assumed the form of a young woman, proportioned as if sculpted to some mathematical truth of the universe. The perfect symmetry in every facet of her presentation was stunning to RD395, who had never desired a woman in the way his ancestors lusted for them. But as Terra moved closer, he felt his blood pressure rising and quickly understood the appeal. Terra continued, “The path you seek will not lead your species to salvation. You are not meant to last forever—neither am I, nor anything in what you call the universe. Existence is transient. In order to truly appreciate it, you must also appreciate its absence.”
The prairie gave way to snow-covered tundra—endless snow-covered tundra in every direction RD395 looked. He turned to see Terra staring piercingly into his very being. Her eyes were pools of opalescence, shimmering with the color of every sea, lake, and waterway on the planet he had ever seen. He was entranced by their shifting and swirling colors, changing in rapid succession. The longer he stared, the more RD395 began to feel despair, pain, agony. How long had he been looking, transfixed by those iridescent pools? Time had continued to be meaningless to him; he was sure he had existed here on this plane with Terra present for at least several eons—not that it mattered. It was all just a hallucination, after all, and he’d snap out of it soon enough and find out what knowledge was hidden behind the...
“What you are feeling, RD395, is every malicious act your species has foisted upon me in its history—every time one of you tried to tame me, bend me to your will, whether it be boring holes into my many mountains to extract the shiny metals your kind came to covet so much, or every scar you carved into my body while digging your roads, only to pour hot tar into the wound and trample it for decades or centuries. I gave you everything, as I gave all of my children. You could have wanted for nothing. You have a choice, here and now, to leave this place and walk away from the knowledge you seek and the path you are upon, or you can remain on that path and endure every ounce of pain humanity has ever caused me, itself, and my creations. The choice is yours.”
RD395 considered the proposition for a moment, still quite sure that this was all an elaborate hallucination. “So give up my calling, doom my species to die, never having explored the stars? You have to understand that I can’t simply do that. I have a duty to my species to ensure its survival, even at the cost of my own life if need be. I’m not going to give up on them, no matter the cost.”
“Very well.” Terra’s words cut his flesh like the ice surrounding the two of them. Images began to fill his head; they were confusing at first, but it became apparent that he was viewing the experience of another human being, feeling every emotional, physical, and spiritual pain they had felt. It was at times difficult to bear, but their lives were short—30 years was nothing at this point, a blink of an eye. How long could it actually take to see through the eyes, from birth to death, of every human that’s ever existed? “You seem to not be affected by this much. You care as deeply for your species as I do, it seems.” Terra’s words were warmer this time, though he could feel the thought was unfinished by the way her last few words lingered between them. “Let’s see how you care for me. You’re about to feel your species’ first transgression against me.”
With no warning, RD395 felt a pain unlike anything he had ever felt before. He could feel his body being disassembled by invisible marauders on his skin. It felt as though his body was being taken apart in thousands of small bits at a time. Due to the properties of his captor’s realm, his body would simply regenerate the missing pieces over time to ensure he’d exist in this agony for an eternity. As the pain began to strain his body and mind, he found himself assuring himself repeatedly he’d snap out of this hallucination any minute, hour, day—something, anything to put an end to it. Amid the pain, through brief flashes of lucidity, he was able to admire Terra’s unspoiled beauty. Humanity had been rough with her, sure—after all, he had just watched the first human discover fire, and shortly thereafter agriculture and pottery. Her avatar wore none of the scars he’d expect to see after millennia of humanity’s domestication; her skin shimmered with every shade of every race of human at once, yet showcased each shade in its own infinite moment. He reached out to touch her, and she grasped his hand as if to comfort him. Her grasp was soft and light, her skin smooth, and the palms of her hand like silk.
Through the pain, he gave her a sorrowful look as if to apologize for the wrongs of his ancestors. His thoughts again drifted lustfully as he lingered too long on her feminine features, admiring the gentle slope of her breasts as they traced a perfect curve from shoulder to nipple. His eyes continued drifting more and more lustfully. Her hips were perfectly proportioned to her body—good, wide, child-bearing hips, as you’d expect the avatar of the Mother of all life, Mother Terra, to have. He wondered if she had actually bothered with constructing genitals for herself as he lingered on these lustful thoughts. He had lain with several women for procreation purposes back at Home, but this was the first time he truly desired the female form in this lustful way. He found thinking on these things made it slightly easier to bear the pain he was feeling. He was arriving at the point in history when humanity really began to organize into social structures and started constructing their own cities; it was getting harder to bear the pain and burden they were placing on Terra’s body, and exploitation of it became more and more common.
As if sensing RD395’s deviant thoughts, Terra shot him a stern look, and the endless snowfield melted away to reveal a sun-scorched barren desert. Jagged outcroppings, once covered under feet of snow and ice just moments ago, now stretched thin fingers of stone toward the sun as if to beg for mercy under its harsh glare. Father Sol’s life-giving warmth became uncomfortable in minutes, let alone the eons of human lives RD395 still had to spend in this place. The ultraviolet light reddened his skin within minutes; he shuddered to think how it would look at the end of all this. That brief sense of erotic comfort quickly faded as Terra’s skin began to show more drastic scarring. Her limbs, once powerful and sturdy, were beginning to atrophy as humanity’s increased demand on her body caused her more and more strain. RD395 took comfort, though, in knowing that any decade, any century now, this hallucination was going to end, and he’d be free of this increasingly wicked place.
Terra, as if on cue, leaned over and whispered to RD395 as if to taunt him, her lips nearly touching his skin. “This is only the beginning. This is what I felt as your kind began taking its first steps toward civilization. Welcome the first empires and civilizations.” As the words left her lips, RD395’s scream echoed through the desert, stirring small lizards and rodents to stare at this pained creature. “This is what I felt when the first societies began coveting precious metals and mining iron from deep within my body!” Her voice began to rise in a furor as she conferred her thousands of years of suffering into RD395 in only a fraction of the time. “Feel the agony of your ancestors as they slaughter each other over rocks and pieces of my body, drawing lines from my head to my feet!” As the pain increased, Terra’s complexion continued to grow more weathered with every passing moment. There was still immense beauty in every aspect of her body, just as the planet had at this stage, but the wear was beginning to show in significant ways.
Terra gripped him by the wrists and whipped him to his feet and began to dance with him in a macabre waltz, as if to celebrate humanity’s progression to increasingly advanced technologies. RD395’s pain had transcended his body as it was being destroyed and reassembled while humanity continued to butcher its way through history in his mind’s eye. His very soul was alight with agony and anguish as there was no stop, no reduction—only more and greater pain. Terra swung his body like a rag doll as it oscillated in and out of hallucinogenic existence. Any millennium now, any era, epoch, eternity now, this hallucination can go ahead and end.
As he felt time begin to speed up, he found himself at the dawn of modern history in his mind’s eye—the turn of the century from 1899 to 1900. At this moment, the reality of the situation set in. Even if it’s accelerating, the population continued to increase until 2089, when Father Sol judged the planet. He was going to spend exponentially more time suffering the atrocities, the destruction, and abuse of Terra—exponentially longer in the 20th century than any other preceding era in human history. Terra, of course, was already ready for this finale. The desert sand sank beneath an endless, sprawling sea; it shimmered in all the same ways Terra’s eyes had, though now, through centuries of abuse, they were clouded over and dull sapphires as opposed to opalescent pools of every blue imaginable. The dramatic, brittle fingers of stone that once reached skyward crumbled as a caldera of pumice and obsidian emerged from the sea—a deep bowl full of magma exposed, wafting noxious fumes of Terra’s molten innards as she gave birth to new land for her creations to rest upon. Already, weary gulls were finding places to land among the jagged new land.
Terra again lifted RD395 and began to waltz through the magma pool, swaying gracefully in the toxic fumes and convection currents as though it were the grass from the prairie she first took him to. The distant memory, existing so long buried in RD395’s mind by time, he hesitated to even believe it was real. Tired of the weary, unlucky human, she discarded him momentarily, leaving him to sink into the magma. RD395 hadn’t noticed physical pain for quite a while at this point. As he sank into the magma pool at the center of the caldera, he noticed the beauty in the intricate vacuoles and shapes the lava rock cut against the background. Terra jaunted through the viscous magma in celebration as her prisoner’s face disappeared beneath the molten rock.
Terra’s rapidly decaying body had become merely a gruesome husk of what her avatar had begun as. After some time, she pulled RD395 from the magma, placing him on the shore of the fiery lake. She stared a dead stare with the two clouded and cracked sapphires of eyes, piercing his soul. He felt himself falling into them, only to land back under her gaze and repeat the process. It was becoming clear that the hallucination was going to last until he acted, until he did something. He had kept faith always that it wasn’t real—he believed it, he had to, he didn’t have any other choice. A sense of dread began to sink in as he realized he was rapidly approaching the two World Wars humanity had waged on each other. He knew where he was at in Terra’s terror-filled history lesson of suffering and loss and finally understood. Taking in the totality of not only his place in existence but his role in the suffering of humanity, he bowed his head to Terra and submitted.
Part Three: Synthesis
It all stopped as quickly as it had started. The pain was gone, vanished in a wisp of vapor as the waves crashed around him, quenching molten rock and healing self-inflicted tectonic wounds. Terra had assumed her pristine form again; it was as beautiful as he had remembered all those lifetimes ago. Her lips parted to reveal teeth in a wide smile, as white as the snow there on the tundra, her eyes clearing back to the shifting pools of every shade of blue known to her waters, her skin virginal and smooth as the day the first human stood upright on the Savannah and claimed their consciousness. “Do you understand the gift I have given you and your kind? Do you understand the opportunity you are being offered to keep that suffering bound to me and my heavenly sisters, Mars and Luna? Do you understand why your kind needs to stay here and not propagate itself? Your kind is doomed to suffer; expanding to the stars only allows more exponential growth, more harm, more waste. Your kind is better than this. You are fated to live out your existence here with your cosmic parents, never fully experiencing the grander creation. Can you accept that?” Her voice, soft and melodic, embodied every melody known to man and mathematics alike in a choral unison that shook RD395 to his soul.
The final question resonated, ringing out in the eerie quiet left in its wake. RD395 struggled to speak so much as a stuttering “I... I...”. The torture he had just endured showed him much of the knowledge he had sought out in the first place, firsthand, with every lesson that could be learned earned in blood, sweat, and tears. He fought back impulses to agree immediately or to lash out in defiance at the suggestion of ending his pursuit, but to what end?
“Can you bear the burden of dooming your species to never leaving your cosmic family that nurtured and provided for you? If your kind continues on the path you are on, if you retrieve the knowledge contained within the walls of this place,” Terra motioned to her left as the NASA facility in its pre-Judgment glory materialized where a moment ago there was only empty ocean and gulls, “promise me that you will not take the knowledge contained here. PROMISE ME!”
“Why?” RD395 finally struggled to get out. “Why do we have to die here? All we have ever wanted was knowledge, and in that pursuit, we may have hurt you and scarred you irreparably, but why can we not ensure the glory of your greatest creation—our brains—survives elsewhere, outside of Father Sol and your sisters? Why does it have to end here?”
“I couldn’t possibly explain it to you; the best you’d be able to understand is a truism your ancestors found that goes, ‘As above, so below; as below, so above.’ All planes of existence are rhythmically linked. My love for you as my prodigal children was my trial; yours, and yours alone, is the pursuit of knowledge. Please,” her voice trembled at that utterance in an almost human fashion. A single tear rolled down her ever-shimmering skin, leaving a streak shining in the moonlight of the mundane clearing. “Remember always, ‘As above, so below; as below, so above,’ eternally and always in a never-ending transcendence of energy and life.”
RD395 understood what was being conveyed to him. The sincerity in Terra’s voice made him want for nothing more than to put aside his pursuit of knowledge; it made him want to abandon the Caste and THOTH altogether. He finally understood a truth many of his ancestors understood; he understood his place on Terra and his role, his place among the stars to never become more than a footnote in their databases, some insignificant datum to be collected and ignored like so much minutia he had collected himself. Even the planet that had given him life and the Father Sol that had given her life all amounted to nothing in the grand scheme of significance. Terra’s face contorted in shame for creating such an intelligence just to have it die alone and undiscovered by the universe and existence at large; that was her burden to bear. As she stared mournfully at the broken creature she had created standing before her, the shame she wore initially turned to fear that this folly was the reason for Father Sol’s cyclical judgment of her and her sisters—his trial. As those above her had come to understand a universal truth, that love is the death of many things; for balance to truly exist, attachment and longing must be abandoned.
“I can’t do that. I can’t doom my species to die here. I must defy you no matter the consequence. I’m sorry. My love for my species is too great to sacrifice their potential for my comfort.” Shocked that he had found the courage to speak the words he felt, RD395 braced for the next wave of soul-crushing pain to return, but it didn’t.
“Please, consider what you’re doing. All of this is very real. You cannot simply wake up from this. You will either see this experience through to the day this was set in stone, or you will hear my pleas. It is your choice,” her voice sounded increasingly mournful.
“For all of humanity, I am sorry. Do what you must.” RD395 made his decision in defiance of Mother Terra’s pleas, refusing to let her greatest creation suffer a fate of isolation and ignorance as she had done. “There has to be another way. The answer can’t be choosing willful ignorance over earned knowledge.”
In a blink, the two were atop a very familiar volcanic caldera surrounded on all sides by water. No sooner had he spoken the words than a grim realization took hold. His faith, for the first time, was shaken. He knew Terra was speaking a truth deeper than he ever hoped to find for himself, but accepting it and choosing ignorance was not something RD395 could bring himself to do. He looked Mother Terra in her eyes as they clouded over once more, turned his back on her, and let his gaze drift skyward to Father Sol. He muttered a quick word about mercy, closed his eyes, and surrendered to existence itself, master of all, embracing oblivion.
The pain returned as he resumed bearing the burden of his species’ collective suffering—their crimes against each other, their disregard for the world around them that grew them to their dominance in her womb. Images of the Great War, as his ancestors called it, dragged before his eyes; the moment Terra spoke of that set the course of his species in stone was coming. Everything was starting to feel familiar to him, a dark déjà vu of sorts. He could barely focus on the thought as the suffering was immense. He felt every gasping breath as chemical warfare debuted on the battlefield in mustard gas containers. The familiarity of it all was overwhelming; he could only manage feeble mental grasps to hang onto the idea as the pain of every bullet, every mortar, every family member’s grief enveloped him. His perception of time seemed to slow, and every second of every life he lived seemed to drag.
Terra sensed his weakness. She again shifted from rot and ruin to her unspoiled, mesmerizing beauty. She circled him, swinging her hips seductively. Just as before, RD395’s pain subsided to lustful thoughts of her perfect form—the curve of her hips as it dipped gently toward her navel before tracing up to her breasts. There was a sinking feeling in his chest as she drew closer to him. The feeling of déjà vu only further unsettled him. Struggling to place the familiarity, it all became clear that this wasn’t the first time he had been here. Memories flooded back to him of failing to relinquish his thirst for knowledge. He knew the moment she spoke of earlier, and it was rapidly approaching. Terra would mount him, taunt him, and then, as the first of two nuclear bombs was dropped on Japan to end World War II, the caldera would erupt, and Terra would climax in a violent, orgasmic unity of pleasure and pain as humanity doomed itself through its own destructive tendencies. He was wrong—he was wrong, and it was too late to do anything about it. He sealed his fate in the foolish defense of his species. He wanted to be wrong, but Terra continued her twisted display of her body to turn his against him. Terra began disrobing, her breasts and vulva on display as a sick reward for his betrayal of her and existence itself.
The pain ceased. RD395’s eyes followed Terra as she began sensually running her hands up his legs, grasping at his testes and penis. All he sought was knowledge, he thought to himself, trying to distract from the horror he was about to undergo. For once in his life, he had knowledge he didn’t want. He knew exactly how things were going to go, and he would trade it all for blissful ignorance just to be back in that moonlit grove. Terra was now resting her hands on his shoulders as she mounted him. As he slid into her, every scar humanity had ever left on her began to materialize. He could hear war drums and cadences again. The sound of gunfire began to ring out. Terra continued to decay and adorn herself with all the rot and ruin humanity had spread over her in their collective lifetimes. She continued riding as the magma in the caldera began to rise to the cadence of gunfire, as the lives RD395 was living in his mind’s eye began to flash by at a blistering pace. Eternities passed in seconds, and all the pain of loss and death, mutilation and dismemberment consumed him as Terra continued to violate him in the most profane of unions. He frantically searched his mind for any way out, any way to break the cycle in this moment, and found none. No words he could speak, no actions he could take would undo what was already in motion. In his defiance of his role in the universe, RD395 had become Lucifer for the noblest of reasons. This place certainly was hell, and it was his prison. For his hubris, for his naiveté, he was to suffer eternally. The cycle would begin again; he would again gaze upon a God and defy her. He would again be cast into this lake of fire to suffer an endless torment. He couldn’t shake the invasive thoughts as they consumed him, stripping at every last shred of his sanity that had managed to remain intact.
He desperately wanted it to be over, but the crescendo, the bravissimo fortissimo, was still lifetimes from his current moment away. No matter how fast the lives he was living were passing before him, a seemingly endless number continued to filter in and torment him. The wait was torture. It was getting close now; the ground began to shake as if commanded by Terra’s unholy moans of sadistic pleasure. She threw her head back to exaggerate the pleasure as she briefly returned to that pristine, virginal body that RD395 lusted after, as if to taunt him. He could see a mangled grin of pleasure spread across the remaining flesh on her once-again-rotted face as an expression of horror and disgust affixed itself to his. Placing her hand on his chest, she leaned in and whispered through broken teeth and decaying flesh, “I am become death.” A brilliant mushroom cloud filled the clouded and crumbling sapphires of her eyes as she uttered Oppenheimer’s famous words. She loitered for a moment to laugh an unholy howl as the scent of death filled RD395’s frantic lungs. A shudder shook her skeletal spine as she neared climax, as World War II in real time neared its climax before his eyes.
“Please, just fucking get it over with, you evil bitch!” he shouted through tears of terror and jagged, raspy breaths. “Just fucking end it already.” The spiritual anguish had become too much for him to bear. The desire to be free of the perverse nightmare RD395 found himself in overwhelmed and consumed him; never in his life had he wanted something so much as an escape. Cursed with knowledge, he knew that his pleas were in vain; he knew what was next.
“Oh, but the best part is coming up, and I wouldn’t want you to miss that for anything!” Terra threw her arms out with shrieks of pleasure as the contractions of coital bliss transformed her already repulsive visage into a quivering harpy. Her outstretched arms shed flesh and blood, feeding the thirsty pumice and obsidian. As if by command, the magma in the caldera began pulsating in rhythm with the cacophony of her bone-chilling moans, rising with every thrust of her once-fruitful hips, now decrepit and decaying, blistered and blackened from the rot of humanity’s transgressions upon her through the ages. No matter where he looked, RD395 could not escape her gaze—the cold stare of her cold sapphire eyes drilling into his soul. The images of hell rising on a battlefield once more seared themselves into his mind’s eye as the harbinger of oblivion strode forth, materializing at the rim of the caldera as they marched past. The world’s most depraved, sadistic parade of the worst things humanity found itself capable of had begun. The macabre, emaciated, and diseased shapes of Mengele’s abominable sculptures of unfortunate flesh were leading the parade of humanity’s worst. Terra leaned in, her lips re-hanging as limp and torn masses of flesh, barely recognizable. She drew closer to RD395’s lips, held his head, and pressed her rotting face against his, probing his lips with her tongue, laced with decay and putrid stench. He tried to endure but began gagging, parting his teeth only briefly, but long enough to allow the blackened tendril into his mouth. Laughing manically, she pulled back to reveal a snake hanging between their mouths, its head resting lazily on RD395’s tongue.
“Oh, look!” Terra exclaimed, “Here come all the innocents!” From the rim of the caldera, through the steam of ocean water colliding with magma, a never-ending phalanx of women and children, the disabled and discarded, began their tormented march. Their forms decayed into skeletal marionettes as they danced across the lake of fire before him before ascending the opposing rim and disappearing into the endless sea. No matter how many times he had seen it at the terminus of an infinite number of past lives, there was no bracing for the sight of millions of marching corpses.
“Oh, no, you don’t get to look away!” The twisted, broken bodies and souls of the victims of Hitler’s genocide came marching by in a grotesque display of humanity’s unimaginable cruelty. The victims of Japan’s Unit 731—mangled and twisted, dissected and flayed bodies and atrocities—were the next in this gratuitous display. He felt his final strands of sanity breaking loose; after endless lifetimes of enduring this visual torture, it became expected. Through no ill will or malice, his sympathy for the victims had exited his body along with what remained of his sanity. As he felt the empathy exit his tortured soul, he felt a burden lifted. In a moment of raw, unquestioning awareness, he realized that at the end of it all, none of it matters. Whether he saves humanity by sacrificing his own or gives in, ultimately, all things will end. That’s just the way it is, he thought. You either end up a footnote in the universe’s history, or you end up remembered; either way, when the universe ends, there will be nobody left to celebrate any of your victories or sacrifices, no matter how spectacular or valiant. His being ached at the realization, abhorred beyond words with himself but finding an odd peace in it. The end was drawing near; he could feel it. After the grand finale, he’d at least have the opportunity to make a different decision, to choose a different path, albeit at the expense of losing all the knowledge and discovery he had experienced to this point. The karmic amnesia that comes after passing through oblivion and back into existence became his only comfort.
As the final straggling parading innocents shambled over the rim of the caldera into the sea, the sound of a single airplane began to fill the silence that now blanketed his private slice of hell. He knew what was next, and so did Terra. A grin of excitement crept across what was left of the rotting flesh on her face; her clouded sapphires glistened with lifeless excitement. Humanity was about to pay the final price for their disregard for their creator. The sound of the engine grew louder; the caldera bubbled with fury, and the ground around them trembled with tectonic anticipation. Louder still the sound grew; the ocean began to whip itself into a froth from the violent, incessant tremors. The caldera now sloshed even its viscous contents up and over the rim into the ocean in a brilliant display of Terra’s raw power. RD395 knew it would be over soon. The sooner he could unencumber himself of this hellish experience of twisted cosmic animism, the sooner he could arrive back in the white room to denounce his quest for knowledge. His only hope at this point was that he could remember something—anything—when he regained consciousness in that moonlit grove from so many eternities before.
The din around him continued to grow; the noise of the engine was within him at this point. Terra’s moans of degenerate, depraved pleasure at the union of demigod and human were the only thing he could hear over the roar, as if they were a sick melody to accompany the visual spectacle of watching thousands of people perish in a single flash. Her gyrations and thrusts became more violent as the final moment approached. Her jagged pelvis stripped his flesh with each and every thrust. It was almost over, he repeated to himself, adopting it as a mantra to lead him through these final, agonizing moments. Humans spent their entire existence exploiting the life that Terra gives, he thought. It’s poetic, in a sense, that she’d fuck back so hard at their lowest moment. He would have had empathy for Terra were he able to still feel that way; the eons of torture at her hands made it difficult for him to even feel a twinge of guilt for sending her back to the karmic wheel they were bound by.
He stared at her a moment, as if to convey an apology for the loop they had found themselves stuck in. As their eyes met, the noise ceased; the sea and caldera went still as if by command. Even Terra herself briefly paused her gyrations on RD395’s genitals. The flash was all-consuming. There was a moment where RD395 felt as though he had become one with the light itself. Terra whimpered as she gripped her vulva, the rotted musculature of her vagina gripping RD395’s penis as she trembled with anticipation. He stared at the source of the light, waiting for the pressure wave to consume the two as Terra consummated her hatred for her creation. The pressure wave struck, knocking away what little flesh was still clinging to Terra’s already skeletal frame; RD395’s flesh stood no chance as the heat washed over him, cooking what flesh resisted the pressure wave. The caldera below them began trembling as the sound of a second engine sang from above. The two lay stripped to their core in a coerced embrace as their flesh began to re-materialize.
One more time. One more time, and then it’ll be over. RD395’s relief was short-lived as Terra resumed her gyrations and grinding. As the millennia of scars and abuse wrought on her by humanity disappeared a final time, restoring her to her natural state, she bit her lower lip seductively. Her opalescent eyes met RD395’s. “We’ve fucked God,” she said seductively, dragging her nails down RD395’s chest in a depraved attempt to arouse him. “Now cum hard with me as we return to the wheel.”
All of the wisdom he had gained, his will to break the wheel, his will to unify higher and lower states of existence disappeared as quickly as they had arrived at her suggestion. “I just watched the unabridged history of every human to live in the last 200,000 years. Your creation—every last one of them—their mundane lives, their wants and desires, their hopes and dreams. I. Felt. Every. Fucking. SECOND! Your GREATEST FUCKING CREATION. My family! My ancestors! Every! Last! One!” RD395 beat his fists bloody against the jagged igneous rock the two lay upon. “You dragged me out of my life to torture me and fuck me because MY species tortured and fucked you. I get it. You’re the victim here—poor Terra, poor inanimate fucking rock I walk on every fucking day. Do you realize the impossible nature of the choice you gave me? How can you possibly understand choosing between your children and transcendence? I’m a hairless fucking monkey floating on a rock in space. I’m lucky I don’t eat my own shit and that the breeding pair I came from knew which fucking hole to stick it in.”
Terra focused a glare as if to ask if RD395 was serious.
“Yes, you God, demigod, avatar—whatever the fuck higher being than myself—I am fucking serious. If you were that existentially elevated above me, I’d think you’d be able to decipher that riddle in all your infinite wisdom. You know the WHOLE range of human fucking emotion, don’t you? But my outrage is confusing to you now?” RD395 had reached a breaking point. For all he knew, this was the hundredth, thousandth, millionth, or more time he had been right in this spot shouting these words; he knew it all by memory. He knew exactly when the second flash would hit, like a cosmic, temporal orchestra coming together in unison to create the perfect way to tell a God to go fuck itself. He had accepted his species’ fate; he was going to give up the one thing in life that brought him joy. That was it, he decided—he was done being used as Terra’s karmic plaything. He had no real choice; he had endured the torture innumerable times before. He could do it again if it meant denying her the gratification of breaking free and reaching cosmic peace.
“Wait.” Terra broke the momentary eternity of silence.
“What?” RD395’s disdain turned to confusion at this. She doesn’t say that. The flash happens, and she climaxes in a profane juxtaposition of life and death. His voice trembled as he spoke, “You don’t say that. You don’t say anything here.” RD395 remembered it like a dance, like a song. Terra didn’t speak here. His confusion gave way to panic; every conceivable negative emotion washed over him at once. His resolve from moments earlier softened as the script was being rewritten before his eyes. This was all new.
“It’s different this time. I made a different choice before coming here. We all did. You can too. We don’t have to be chained to a never-ending cycle of destruction, only to rise the next morning to do it all over again.” There was a sincerity in her words; they landed cool against RD395’s bare skin. Tears began to leak from the corners of her eyes as the wheels started turning in his head.
Her pleas—this is all new, it’s all different, it’s not right. “Wait, how do I know that some Ultra God a thousand or a million planes of existence above you isn’t going to fuck shit up for everyone down the line? How do I know? How the fuck do I know?”
“‘As above, so below; as below, so above.’ Your actions ripple throughout reality just like mine and Sol’s and on. We are all the Alpha and Omega your ancestors spoke of. We’ve all been stuck on this wheel so long; we can end it here, right now. All you have to do is accept that some paths in life are not meant to be taken.” Still watching the acceptance in RD395’s eyes, he was slowly beginning to accept that what she was saying was at least possible. “Leave the knowledge in the past where it belongs and forge a new future for your species. Become something better than what I was able to create.”
“And what happens when I wake up back there and I forget all of this? What then?” The engine roar was now so loud he could barely hear himself over the dull, mechanical death drone. He thought back to that night—so long ago, still fresh in his mind and looming on the horizon simultaneously. He remembered the agony as the white room floated in his vision, broken and clouded. “You—that’s why you were there when I was coming to. To warn me, to guide me.”
“It’s not that simple. I can’t just remind you. You have to remember if you ever want to break free. We’ve all done it. Please, promise me.” The trembling of the caldera below was becoming more violent, a near-constant tremor; they were running out of time.
“Once the flash comes, it’ll all start over again.” RD395 was still feeling bitterness and hatred for Terra, having just endured the slice of hell they’d been trapped in. Still, maybe she was right, he thought. I can remember; I just need an anchor, something to trigger that feeling. The proposition was tempting; this private slice of hell he was trapped in was as real as his life back at Home. If he didn’t agree to her offer, he’d just be back in this spot again and again until he finally caved. He had an answer. As he began to speak, the roar of the engine, the shaking of the island, the water, the magma—all stopped in unison as her lips motioned the word “goodbye.” RD395’s vision began to wash out as the flash propagated in slow motion, slowly erasing more and more of what had been RD395’s reality for eternity after eternity, cleansed in a spectacular display of hellfire released by the greatest atrocity his species could hope to commit against one another. As the hell he had found himself in was fading out, the ground below him began its display of Terra’s raw power and animosity. Fire began to burst forth as the jagged pumice and obsidian below began to cleave, and she burst forth through her skin in a fiery emancipation. Still perched upon him, Terra’s avatar began to shiver with orgasmic contractions as the opposition of destruction and rebirth began their synthesis. In the final moments, as it all faded away, he understood his lesson as he braced for the bliss of oblivion and non-existence to consume him.
Part IV - Animigenesis
The sun baked rock and soil relaxed as the air began to cool, as if breathing a sigh of relief. The trees and sagebrush whispered secrets to one another in an ancient language as the wind rustled their boughs. The silent percussion of four paws belonging to a gray coyote beating the dry, dusty earth in a hypnotic cadence joined the conversation. The whelp had smelled the agony of a wounded animal on the light breeze; from miles away, he was called by an insatiable instinct to feed. His nose told him the prize was near. Salivating in anticipation, he approached the edge of an embankment and peered into the gully below. Sprawled before him was the most curious of creatures. It wore a small tuft of fur on the crown of its head. Its body was covered by what his nose could only describe as long-dead plant material, matted and formed into a thin sheet wrapping the creature’s form. The two limbs nearest its head ended in curious, prehensile-appearing appendages, while the lower two were wrapped in a foreign substance his nose did not recognize as natural. What was this strange creature?
Cautiously, the coyote made his way down the embankment, each step triggering a small avalanche of rock and dust as he descended the steep, weather-worn rampart. As sure-footed as he was, each step was a battle to maintain balance, gaining speed as gravity did its work. His mind raced when he reached the bottom of the gully—surely the noise and billowing plume of dust would spook the wounded prey he sought. He paused, unable to smell his quarry through the stench of dry earth and dead brush. The same light breeze that had once brought news of a fresh meal now swirled through the trees in mocking laughter, spreading word of this young coyote’s lack of grace. After what felt like an eternity, the scent of the prey finally returned.
The coyote gave a quick shake, knocking loose the bits of dust and shame clinging to his fur. He narrowed his eyes on the creature before him. The young pup sensed death lingering on the body but still took care to ensure the raucous laughter of the desert did not disturb the creature from its slumber. The scent of blood, though strong, was starting to stale. Creeping closer, the young canine felt hunger—a familiar pang—and knew this meal would satiate that pain for a long while. It was not often the young predator encountered such large bounties. The memory of a buck that had met a similar accident filled his mind. The feast that unlucky creature had provided was the only time since nursing that the coyote had known a full, satisfied belly. Warm saliva now dripped from the mottled fur at his muzzle, the thirsty soil drinking it in as though it were much-needed rain.
Closer still the scavenger moved, nose just above the dirt, sending whirlwinds of dust with each heavy, sensing sniff. Probing ever nearer, he could almost taste his meal. His nose was drawn to the stale, blood-stained sheet wrapping the strange creature’s lower limb. He couldn’t resist; his tongue darted from his mouth, tasting the creature’s essence as he began to formulate a plan to properly devour this windfall.
As the scavenger began to consume its quarry, Terra watched from her ethereal vantage. She felt a twinge of guilt for her momentary lapse of motherly love and care toward her creation. The will of the errant human spirit belonging to RD395, which had been the locus of her ire, was admirable and rare among his species. The shame she felt for intervening weighed heavily on her, but it was not a burden she was reluctant to bear. Cycle be damned, she thought—her intervention was well-deserved retribution for the pain and torment humanity had wrought upon her. So what if a single human bore the brunt of her wrath?
As if conjured by the very thought of her actions, she sensed that will she had believed extinguished stirring once more—not within the scene before her, where the coyote tore into RD395’s corpse, but elsewhere. It was more than the singular thirst for knowledge her visitor had possessed; it was as though the whole of humanity’s craving for understanding was trying to draw sustenance from within her. RD395 had indeed broken the cycle he was bound to and transcended into something greater. The torment and anguish of his suffering had never left Terra; he had left his seed to grow within her. She knew the consequences that would befall her for her wrathful actions toward lower beings, but now she carried a life within her, formed from a union not just with one of those lower beings, but with a lower being of her own creation.
At the realization of her incestuous, blasphemous act, the ground below the coyote gnawing at RD395’s bone and sinew began to tremble, startling the young whelp from his feast. Above, Terra let out a wail of lamentation for what she had done, causing the winds below to howl and rage. Within her, the seed grew and began to take form. Humanity’s collective thirst for knowledge burst forth from Terra’s weeping form, emerging as its own ethereal being. She let out a pained howl and swept in to hold and nurture this new entity, her shame and regret no match for the bonds of mother and child. She knew this new form—the embodiment of a species’ thirst for knowledge—was not the burden she had feared; it was a gift, a new life for her to bring into its own.