Terrifying God-Child

[Talos Quinn]

“My name is Omni. This is not the world you know. This is the Omniverse. You interest me, so I have made you part of it. The Omniverse is a place that reflects the wishes of those who are part of it. But! There are rules. I will explain them only once, so listen carefully.” 

Omni hands you a glimmering orb in which all the colors of the rainbow coalesce. “This is Omnilium. It’s what ties the Omniverse together. Without it, you are nothing. With it, anything you desire can be yours. But you will need more than this. If you desire it enough, you will find it. You will find that using it comes naturally. Just think of what you desire most.

“You will not be alone in the Omniverse. There are others. Of course, they, too desire Omnilium. Do not fear death. For as long as you interest me, you will be reborn.

“That’s all you need to know right now. You’ll figure out the rest soon enough. I’ll be watching … and waiting.”

----

The most pertinent fact Talos had just learned was that his continued existence depended on being interesting to a terrifying god-child.

It occurred to him as he stood, trembling slightly, in front of an alabaster fountain, that he should have inquired as to what things the terrifying god-child found entertaining.

But there had not seemed an opportune moment to interject. And one did not interrupt terrifying god-children. It was not done.

On reflection, the entire experience had the feel of a recorded message. A miraculously high-fidelity recording that touched all senses. A truly unique orientation video.

Oh. And there was rainbow miracle stuff. What was it called? Omni-things. Wish-fulfillment material. The stuff of dreams made manifest.

It occurred to Talos that this might be a dream, but he dismissed that quickly as trite. It might be true, but to assume it felt cliche, and Talos disliked being cliche, even when his entertainment value was not being judged by a terrifying god-child.

Right. Entertaining the TGC (he was tired of saying terrifying god-child in his head, it was making him anxious, so he decided to go with an acronym). He should get on that. What did children like? Candy? Hoop trundling? His experience with children was somewhat dated, as he had avoided them like the plague since becoming a horrifying blood drinking monster two centuries ago.

Juggling. Children always liked juggling. But he didn't have anything to juggle.

But he did have some glowy-rainbow stuff that would turn into anything he could imagine.

...

He had glowy-rainbow stuff that would turn into ANYTHING he could IMAGINE.

Talos immediately forgot about being terrified of the TGC and started trying to manifest Escher paintings in the world around him.

[Talos Quinn]

The material was not only a rainbow of colors. It was a rainbow of everything.

It was all textures. It was soft and rough and smooth and sharp and damp and brittle. It was lacquered wood and it was cotton and it was pine needles.

It was all smells. Lilacs and gasoline. Sea breezes and attic must.

It was all tastes and sounds and, of course, all colors. Ocean green, sky blue, the cherry red of winking police lights and the almost gold at the edge of dawn.

Almost as fascinating as the non-euclidean infinite composition of the dream stuff, was how he could shape it. He could twist it like a wire, or tear it like paper, then mould the edges of the paper back together, smoothing it into virgin wholeness. 

It took only about fifteen minutes to create a whole object, but for the first two hours, he never reached a whole object. He was too fascinated by the process of creation. Littered around him were the following half-things:

Half of a fender that had been crocheted out of copper,  its end still rough with loops of metal.

Two thirds of an orange that smelled like chocolate.

One third of a stool made patchwork out of iron, concrete, rubber, glass and bubble gum.

An intangible bushel of sensations, composed of the smell of daffodils, the taste of butterscotch, and the sound of Benedict Cumberbatch reciting Edgar Allen Poe's "The Bells."

A half woven cloud.

After the cloud, Talos regained his interest in recreating Escher paintings. He did a miniature of the endless stair. Then he made a little robot to walk around it and watched it until he had a headache.

He drew the two hands drawing each other, and left them endlessly detailing filigree on each other's sleeves.

Then he painted Escher's mosaic of lizards, that transformed into real lizards, and then descended back into the tessellation.


[spoiler]



[/spoiler]

Then he freaked out about the fact he had just created life.

----

The current deployment of Stormtroopers guarding Coruscant were always wary of unknown Primes, particularly when they seemed upset. But this Prime was not violent in his upset, so they assigned the lowest ranking soldier present to talk to him about his problem in the hopes that this would engender goodwill and encourage him to join the Empire, or at least get him to go away.

"Is it dangerous?" Ensign BV-5390 asked nervously.

"It is potentially deadly," said Talos. "To my freewheeling bachelor lifestyle, formerly bereft of familial responsibilities."

Ensign 5390 looked at the brown reptile, which was small enough to sit comfortably in Talos' hand, with equal parts anxiety and skepticism. It did not seem very deadly to him, but he'd seen Primes produce violence out of some very strange things.

"Is it poisonous?" he asked.

"I don't know!" said Talos, throwing up his non-lizard hand. "I don't know anything about it! I can quote to you the entirety of Much Ado About Nothing, or make an extensive improvisational fuss about nothing, but I know absolutely actually nothing about biology. However, despite this seemingly grievous dearth of expertise, I have produced the complex alchemy that is life, Athena-like, bursting whole from my mind!"

"Burst from your mind? So it's like an Alien?" said Ensign 5390, taking a hasty step back from what might be a Facehugger, and grasping his rifle.

Talos took a step back himself, and held up a calming hand.

"Your grasp of metaphor is as nuanced as your fashion sense, my friend," he said. "Do not fret. I am as confident as I can be of anything at the moment that this lizard poses no eminent danger to you."

"Okay," said Ensign 5390, releasing his grip on his firearm. "So what's the problem?"

"I don't know what lizards EAT!" Talos almost-yelled, returning to the frenetic state in which he had first approached the portal. "I made LIFE and I have NO IDEA HOW TO SUSTAIN IT! This was completely irresponsible of me! More so than usual! Am I supposed to be holding it? Do lizards like being held? Is it even a lizard?" 

Ensign 5390 took a step back as Talos brandished the possibly-a-lizard in front of his helmet. The lizard shifted to keep its perch in Talos' palm. Talos continued his rant.

"It was created by dream-stuff derived from an impossible painting. What does that mean? Is Omnilli-stuff permanent? Have I brought it into existence just to crumble into nothingness in a few bittersweet hours? I am morally responsible for the continued existence of a creature I know nothing about. WHAT DO LIZARDS EAT?"

"Bugs?" Ensign 5390 guessed. "You could, make bugs for it?"

"Are you SERIOUSLY proposing that I use my godlike powers to MANUFACTURE LIFE for the EXPRESS PURPOSE of being EATEN?" said Talos.

Ensign 5390 was experienced enough with superior officers to tell when a question was rhetorical, and so said nothing.

"Though, to be entirely fair, it could be argued that much of animal husbandry is in that business," Talos said, pinching the bridge of his nose. "And I suppose farms aren't morally reprehensible. Though, there feels like a difference between raising a chicken to eventually eat, and manifesting a chicken to be immediately devoured."

"You could make a dead chicken," Ensign 5390 suggested.

This suggestion took Talos by surprise to the point of brief speechlessness. After a few seconds, Ensign 5390 continued tentatively into the unaccustomed silence.

"Or, I mean, dead bugs. And a dead chicken. Both I guess, if you don't know what it eats."

"That," Talos began, pointing at Ensign 5390. "Would work. I think. You are very sensible and I am very grateful."

"Okay," said Ensign 5390. "Great. Would you like to join the Empire?"

There was another long pause. During it Talos glanced from Ensign 5390, to the other uniformed guards, to the other intimidating steel arch. He very slowly drew back, folding his free hand protectively over his lizard.

"No...I'm good. Thanks."

[Talos Quinn]

Talos sped away from the Corucant portal as fast as his floating armchair could carry him.

The history behind the floating armchair should be explained: Immediately after creating life, Talos had started casting wildly about the white abyss for someone to help him answer his lizard-related questions.

He had not found anyone near the fountain, but had seen the far off arches and theorized that someone had probably made them out of the rainbow dream-stuff, and that someone might still be hanging about. So he had made a beeline for one of them.

When he found that his pace did not match his frenetic mood, he paused to make a vehicle, reasoning that such a feat fell under the purview of the infinite possibility the omni-stuff seemed to represent, and that it would make things much faster.

A car had seemed too bulky, and he'd never been good at driving anyway, and it would leave tiremarks on the pretty white floor, and he disliked horses, and the dream-stuff did not seem limited by logic, so he figured he'd just imagine the most comfortable thing possible, and make it mobile.

Thus--floating armchair. Which apparently could reach speeds of up to 80 mph.

Then he had used his new floating armchair to transport himself and his lizard to the Corucant portal, where he met his dear friend Ensign 5390. There he learned many new and interesting things, such as the fact that there was an Empire, which employed people who, on reflection, looked remarkably like Stormtroopers.

Talos had seen Star Wars. He was old, but he was not out of touch.

So he made like a Skywalker and fled the Empire, fast as a landspeeder across the flat plane of the Nexus.

----

After fleeing the Empire for about five minutes, Talos decided to turn and investigate another one of the arches, in the hopes that they would turn out less fascist. He angled towards the closest one.

As he approached he saw that the arch itself was made out of worn stone. The space beneath the arch was odd.

His first impression was that it was a painting. A savanna landscape.

Then he saw the bushes swaying in a breeze, and he chided himself for being old fashioned--it was a television screen, obviously.

Then, as he pulled up in front of it in his armchair, he felt the breeze. And he saw that some of the sand and brush had fallen over the edge and dusted the pristine white of the Nexus floor.

Neither painting nor screen, it was a doorway to real place.

Well, that was no more or less impossible than the other things he'd seen here.

He stepped off of his armchair and, putting his lizard in his breast pocket for safekeeping, approached cautiously.

He made a cane out of Omnilium. He poked the arch. He poked the cane through the arch.

He picked at some of the grass that hung over the portal. It was solid and felt miraculously mundane.

He stood and looked out over the desert for a while. There was something soothing about seeing a cluttered landscape after the unrelenting blankness of the Nexus.

Eventually, he sat down and attempted to feed his lizard.

[Talos Quinn]

The lizard liked the chicken. It was not a huge fan of the bugs. Talos examined the insect bodies he had produced, limp flies and moths in a row, meditating idly on the significance of a corpse that had never been alive. Less philosophical, his lizard ate an entire leg of roast chicken and fell asleep.

Talos tossed the tiny corpses and chicken bones into the grass. Then he towed his armchair behind the archway. On the other side he discovered three bicycles and a Ferrari, implying that he wasn't the first person to have this idea, and that it might work. Then he stepped through the window to another world.

Despite having started the process of exploring this particular archway, Talos was not at all convinced it was a good idea. The air was dry, the night was cold with a bite more natural to desert than savanna, and there was a desolate feel to the place.

But that was part of what interested him. The desolation. The note of need that resonated through in arid climates, where water was rare and precious. Having recently discovered he could produce water out of air, there was a a force of conscience that drew him towards dry places.

He'd probably change his mind once he got uncomfortable, and go see if one of the other arches led to a library. Or an orgy.

He started to weave an mask about himself, then realized he didn't know what the local population looked like. The only people he'd met were Stormtroopers, and he didn't want to pose as one of them.

He tried to turn invisible. That was something he used to do all the time--magical vampires powers and all that. He discovered, to his consternation and mild alarm, that he couldn't.

He wove five different masks around himself in rapid succession, to assure himself that THAT still absolutely worked. He was a trucker. He was a super model. She was an auto-mechanic. They were a college student. She was a physicist. He was an English poet again, there. Yes. Okay. That power still worked.

Soothed, he made binoculars out of Omnilium and examined the surrounding countryside.

He discovered that a tower of Stormtroopers were watching him with their own, more impressive binoculars. He waved. He increased his wariness by a factor of ten.

Then he discovered a local to imitate, and a city.

[Thread Finished]