Chapter Zero: The Beginning of the Story – Changing Things
"One creates from nothing. If you try to create from something you're just changing something. So in order to create something you first have to be able to create nothing. "
- Werner Erhard
The small planet's days were numbered. There was no doubt, no discussion about this fact. Everyone understood it and everyone accepted it. The only question was what would be the best reaction to this - this unchangeable event that would bring about the end of life as everyone knew it.
The group of intelligent beings didn't have a name for themselves. They were the only ones it seemed, the only life in the entire universe. There were no other forms on their planet. There were only themselves, the rocky planet and the gaseous moist atmosphere that was their cradle.
Each day, the community met on the great plain to gather sustenance for the day. They gathered the sunlight for energy. From the planet they gleaned needed molecules to provide nutrients and solidity to their forms, and from the air they collected other rarer elements required for survival. There was peace and harmony in the gathering as they refreshed themselves and communed with each other. And it was on this great plain that they made their decision on what would be the best thing to do.
None of them had ever ventured from this planet. There had never been any reason to do so. They had always lived here, from the first moment they had become aware of themselves. And they had everything they needed here: food, moisture, light and the companionship of each other. So they did not know if it was possible for any of them to survive out there in the darkness with the little points of light. But they had speculated that if this planet existed, perhaps others were out there and perhaps they could support life. It was also a great concern that any other planets might have a limited lifespan and be vulnerable to destruction – as their home world was about to experience. After much thought and sharing of ideas, they came up with what they all agreed was the best possible plan. It was not without risk of failure, and it would be a costly plan to carry out. But they were of one mind in the belief that it was the only possible way to preserve their most important attribute – life.
They experimented at first, ascending higher and higher into the atmosphere assessing how their bodies reacted. What they discovered was that the elements forming the gaseous shell surrounding their planet thinned greatly the higher they went. The forces of the planet dwindled and the cold emptiness outside of their home became apparent. A way would have to be found to preserve at least some of them to go out into the deep and explore. If another place like their home world could be found, then perhaps it could support life. Their best minds eventually figured out such a way.
"Good Feeding," the polite address drifted to her as she lay spread out on the plain absorbing her daily needs. "Good Feeding," she responded, "We have not addressed before, have we?"
"No, we have not. I noticed you from over there," a waving protuberance formed and pointed to the ridgeline. "I finished feeding for the day and wanted to greet you. How are you called?"
"I am called Paya," she answered, congealing herself back into a denser form. "How are you called?"
"I am called Ceti," she answered. "I know you are aware of The Going Out. It has been decided that I am to serve. I am appointed to choose another – I choose you, if you are willing."
Paya rolled her edges as she immediately responded. "I am willing to serve the greater purpose. What must I do?"
"We will be embraced by the community and altered so that we may accomplish our mission. When the time arrives, we will leave this planet together and go out."
She understood immediately, but still asked, "Go where?"
"Out there," Ceti again formed a protuberance and pointed to the stars. "Out there we will search for planets similar to this one and when, or if, we find them we will release the elements of life. If we are successful, our kind will go on, inhabiting many worlds and never again will everyone be threatened by utter destruction."
"I am ready," indicated Paya.
"We are ready." Ceti spoke to the community. Immediately, the plain undulated with the movement of everyone. They encircled the two and covered them, layers deep, forming a brilliant cocoon of transformation. They did not feed or rest as the sun crossed the plain, set and then rose again. As a community, they imbued the pair with all the knowledge, sustenance and energy their forms possessed. To Ceti they gave great strength and bravery, to Paya they gave the gift of endless energy with which to tend the fire of life. They also gave the pair many other as-yet unnamed characteristics which would slowly reveal themselves in the long voyage ahead. Together the group of beings worked out the altered forms of Paya and Ceti, each giving of themselves until they were nearly gone. By twilight of the following day, the metamorphosis was complete and the great pupa opened. Ceti emerged first, followed by Paya. In the light of the setting sun they admired each other.
"Ceti, you are darker…thicker. I observe that you have a greater substance and you are not as malleable as before. There is something else different about you, but I am unable to describe it."
"Yes," he answered. "And you are larger now, and so beautifully bright!"
The community interrupted them, "You have both been changed to ensure the survival of life. Here are your instructions. When you are ready to travel through the great darkness, you will merge your bodies together and form a shape suitable for this travel – a great vessel of life. You will find that Ceti will provide the physical substance and strength of this vessel. It is Ceti's task to protect life - the spark of life that will be carried in you, Paya. You will travel with Ceti until a planet is located. You will both evaluate the planet's potential for life to be seeded there. If you agree that it is unfavorable, you will pass it by and continue searching. If you agree that it is favorable, according to the factors you now have engrained within you, you will separate on the planets surface and then work together to seed the planet with life. All patterns for working together are implanted within you. They will present themselves when the time and conditions are correct and you will find it simply to follow them. It is now time for you to leave."
The structure of the cocoon crumbled as Ceti and Paya began to circle each other. It was a perfect circle, if anyone had cared to measure it. As they circled, they moved closer and closer until they intermingled and finally merged – sliding their atoms past each other in the vastness of inner space. When the pattern was complete, a sleek dark shape, tapered at one end and wider at the other, hovered above the ground. Traces of Paya's light could be seen emerging from the wider end as her endless energy would propel the vessel that was the two of them. The vessel began to rise from the surface and the narrowed end lifted to point the way. It began to vibrate as Paya built her energy and then, faster than anyone could follow it, shot into the darkness and was gone.
The community relaxed, so much of their energy depleted from providing for Ceti and Paya. They remained calm, waiting for the end. It would happen quickly from their point of view, but if there would have been anyone else watching they would have waited eons for the little rocky planet circling the edge of the singularity to be pulled inside.
The vessel streaked silently through the darkness. Time had no meaning. There was no setting and rising of the sun, no gathering of the community to feed and share thoughts on the plain. As they traveled, Ceti and Paya spoke to each other, exchanging many thoughts, and many ideas. They came to understand some of the changes within each of them. Where before, they had been much the same, they were now rather different both inside and outside. Ceti's mission was to protect the elements of life - to defend and provide the physicality of The Project. Paya was to nurture the spark of life and when the time was right, combine it with what Ceti provided to give each favorable planet the beginnings of life. Their kind would be spread through an untried and untested mechanism. It had been discussed that each favorable planet might provide slight or major differences in how the seeds of life developed there. Even if that happened, the community knew that at the very basic level – all life would be related and could trace back to them.
Paya felt Ceti slowing down. "There is a planet! We will be there shortly to begin checking to see if it could sponsor life." They made three orbits around the large orb below them. It was much larger than the homeworld had been and was strangely divided between a major dry area that took up the middle and bulk of the surface, and vast fields of ice at each end of the rotational axis.
Ceti felt Paya's sadness, "This planet could be a wonderful place for life, but needed sustenance is bound in the ice instead of being distributed. The ice melts along the edge, but the water drips down into the ground right there and disappears. I wish there was a way to bring it to the bulk of the planet. The elements of life might thrive here, then."
Ceti told her. "Let us think of a way to change this planet, and then perhaps it will be more favorable."
"Is that allowed?" she asked, searching the mission's parameters. "I cannot find anything regarding this. Would it be within the definition of…honor... to alter what we find?" She directed her concept to his receptors and fed him her new thoughts.
"I cannot find anything in our instructions regarding it," he replied. "So, I must assume that it is allowed if we think it is a possibility. Perhaps this is the only planet we will come across! What a shame to waste it. We would be lacking this new thought form you call 'honor' if we did that."
"Agreed," Paya replied. So they worked out an idea together and then went down to the surface where they separated. It felt very odd to be apart after spending so long as a single physical being. She watched as Ceti reformed himself into a true solid and burrowed down under the ground along side the ice. He was gone for several cycles of the planet's sun. When he returned he went to another place alongside the ice and burrowed down. Again he was gone for several days. He did this over and over until there were eight great underground channels to river the water away from the ice as it melted.
"Where does the water go?" she wondered.
"It rises to the surface near the middle of the planet. There it will provide a place where the planet, the water and sunlight mingle – all the necessary elements to feed. That is where we must seed the planet. It will be some time before enough water accumulates. Let us rest on this planet until that time comes."
So they did, conversing with each other as always. They explored the vast desert, as a strange curiosity overcame Ceti. He wondered what all of the planet looked like. They also wandered over the polar ice caps. Sometimes they rejoined to form a single body just because it was comforting to do so. Paya sorted and maintained the lighter elements she carried, along with the spark of life. Ceti organized and ordered the heavier elements he carried and found himself looking out for Paya's comfort and any problems that might arise. They shared their thoughts frequently about the planet and the life that might grow there.
One day she asked him, "Do you think that the beings that grow from what we plant here will retain any knowledge of us?"
He thought for a time as this was something he'd not considered. "Certainly we may never pass this way again. We cannot teach them about where they came from. What a loss!" He felt mournful. Paya felt his sorrow.
"Ceti, I cannot bear for you to feel this way! I will engrave a core memory of us within what we leave here. I do not know what they will remember of us, but something will be retained and if we were ever to return, we might be able to find it."
"That pleases me," Ceti beamed at her. "I picked the right one to join me on this adventure."
"Your words please me," Paya replied. "That day, why did you pick me out of all the others? You could have picked anyone."
"I know. I have pondered this often. There was something different about you, Paya. You stood out to me – perhaps you were softer, or lighter. I'm not certain. But I know that I made the best choice."
"I've never thought of myself as different from any of the others. Now I find that I'm pleased that you chose me, Ceti. And there is no where I would rather be than with you."
"Not even deep in a black hole?" he teased.
"Not even there," she answered, a certain softness coming over her edges that had not been there before.
He looked at her as though she were new and beheld her beauty – both inside and out. "It is time," he stated, "the joining pattern appears."
She responded by spreading out, a luminous beckoning to her body that was ripe with the promise of life. He went to her and pressed a projection of himself into her. Her body rippled in response. "Did I cause you distress?" he asked.
"No, it is unexpectedly pleasurable!" came the answer.
In this form they joined, as Ceti placed within Paya's body his contribution to life. Then, still attached, they lifted into the air and skimmed over the surface following one of the underground rivers until they reached where it spewed water out over the surface. It was in this place that they consummated the joining pattern as the elements of life rained down from Paya's body onto the puddles of water below, surprising them both with feelings of pleasure.
When they were finished, they separated, Ceti withdrawing his body from hers. Paya reached a tendril of herself to caress the darker shape of Ceti. "I have no way to tell you how I feel. I wish to be with you forever."
"I am pleased with your wish," he replied, "I have no way to tell you my feelings either – they are quite new to me. We will have the time to invent ways."
They rejoined into the vessel, lifting from the surface and continued their search into the darkness. They traveled immeasurable distances and found many planetary bodies both suitable and unsuitable for life. The unsuitable ones they would pass over quickly. The suitable ones they would explore and seed with life. Then they would rest for a time, trying to imagine how life would grow in this place and what changes the environment would wrest from it.
Eventually they came to a small yellow star with many planets circling it. On the third planet out from that star they found an amazing place where the mass of water surpassed the mass of dry land which was gathered together in one place on the surface. It was a beautiful sight to behold, the extreme blueness of the world with one blob of brownish rocky land. It was orbited in turn by a single cratered moon. "This looks promising," observed Paya, as Ceti moved them into an orbit.
"This place has great upwellings from below the surface, and see, the land is not a single mass but plates that have the potential to move about. Will such a precarious place do?"
Paya's tinkling voice laughed at him, "Life will rise to such a challenge. I foresee bold explorers and forms as varied as the stars emerging here. I only hope that the beings that emerge here realize the preciousness and beauty of this jewel of the universe that they will dwell upon."
"Come then," Ceti extended himself to her even as they separated. "Let's find just the right place for me to gift you with my elements!"
"You are always so eager!" she exclaimed, reaching part of her self to be enveloped within his grasp. "But then so am I each time," she admitted. "Such a gift the others gave us – this ability to bring together new life from an act of extreme pleasure between us. Do you think they understood how wonderful it would be?"
"I have no idea," he admitted, pulling her towards the great puddle ahead of them. "Look here! It is similar to the home world, isn't it?"
"A perfect place!" she beamed at him and began caressing him with the length of her body. "We are the first beings in this place, my love. This is the eve of life here." And with that, all words ceased until Paya birthed the elements of life into the warm pond.
"Go!" cheered Ceti, at the elements acclimatizing to the water, "Form the first life upon this place and multiply!" They both watched as the elements danced into the form of the familiar double helix that was their combined signature. The molecules joined and formed a barrier between the within and the without as the beautiful tiny life form began to take on a green coloring and then divide.
"What an amazing beginning!" Paya exclaimed. "And from this, intelligence will grow? Self-awareness?"
"It will, my love. Have faith that it will. We should depart. We've lingered a long time here."
"I know, but it was beautiful to watch!"
They merged together and the great vessel ascended into the clouds to continue the journey. Below, the cluster of cells kept merrily dividing even as some of the daughter cells began to change, following the pattern implanted within.
A/N: I've wanted to write this bit for some time, but had to await the right opportunity. Hope you enjoyed my little foray into 'creation'. Not the ultimate first one, of course. And there are my usual hooks into the other stories here, if you can find them.