CHAPTER INFINITY

When I look out into the clouds, their pillows are woven of pudding and mousse; I see them running down as poured milk into effervescent pools below, and from their waves I see countless bubbles - within their film, projections into worlds beyond.

I feel my own body, now; my skin feels tight and warm. Falling from my shoulders, soft as warm satin, was my flesh: curious and complex as it had been, but I abandon it freely. Overhead, moments converge into one, and I find myself returned to a place I can only remember when I've returned there - it's the same moment as it was every time before: unpassing, non-repeating, so unfettered from time that it feels as though I may have never left it at all.

The bright sea of buzzing static extends infinitely in every direction, and it's insurmountably dense: not a fragment of the infinite space is unoccupied; yet, I find in the ominous stillness, I am pressed forward by a heavy, ceaseless current - it is the howl of want: incessant, but not desperate, and it simmers violently from every side. I am stirred by the gnashing of its ravenous teeth, and I do not disintegrate within it. Soothed not by omnipotent conscience nor celestial tranquility, I find that within this plasmic space of naught but want, there is bliss in feeling nothing else at all. It is a space barren of life and consequence, and I hear the song from the brilliant mosaic of every minute world's projection, drifting through them as the currents press me onward.

I feel at once the echoes of the remose gorgonocephalus - the composer of the song of ravenous desire - how it spreads along the branches of every axis in winding veins and arteries, pressing sap towards its beating heart. I was within its sprawling capillaries, and I felt suddenly the weight of a great burden melt deeply within my unseen form.

The biochemistry of man: life, original - suffused with the blood and the pollen of Sap, pure and undiluted, tapped from the Incision where the first voyager had been devoured - its vapours, enough to melt and remould the skin, to turn inward the mind and quiet the senses; invisible, heavy mist that left the land barren of life, save but for those who wore masks, or the animals that flew above.

A beautiful augmentation, overseen by a brilliant machine, a reaction on a level as minute as the missing mass, expanding in the milk in the shape of familiar form. Untouchable, pure and holy, the emblem of the absolute and of life, sated and fulfilled. Only this form, this spirit, could communicate with the bright void beyond man's Incision, finding and hearing the voice of every particle on the other side of the corporeal - a god that could hear and comprehend the tongue of the branching gorgonocephalus of the space beyond: the furtherverse.

Through the all-encompassing din, I feel a voice vibrate the current that envelops me:

"I hear you, I forgive you, my sweet brother," a quiet voice whispered. "You're admirable and kind and you always have the best intentions, even if they are so hopelessly naive and even if they can be selfish. You care for the birds, you care for the children, you respect and revere the words of those with more wisdom - your heart, always, is gracious and curious and driven by love and the need to be loved, in turn; you seek to laugh and smile often, and to fill the hearts of those who knew you and the eyes that saw you with love and affection. A flower child, truly - the unfurling of a marigold's petals, the shimmer of a peacock's tail in the summer sun - your hands are gentle, your footsteps light and dancing, your voice the cheerful whistle of panpipes with a laugh that twinkles like windchimes in the breeze.

"As static returns to the earth, as minds return to oblivion, as both you and I surrender ourselves our corporeal bodies to the deepest point of the darkest ocean - as our atoms molt back unto the earth; I hope you'll remember me."

I am become the apex of my universe; the fruits of its generations of observers more refined, capable, and complex, that it might find the rift between its world and oblivion and surrender themselves to it with or without knowing; when at last the cell wall splits as a yolk in a hot pan, and the contents are returned, dense and rich, to the Sap that conceived it; pumping within the network of vessels that comprise this eternity, beating perceptions the fluid has digested - generating new cells, new worlds, from the recycled concepts - repeating ad infinitum, the process is insatiable; it is impatient, the digestion incessant; Voidblood, it is called, and it is the blood beating into the core of forever, the eye that shines in the very center of its winding limbs, an entity that surpasses omnipotence as man could have fathomed it.

Myself - I am a child of nothing, of dark matter, unruptured from my passing through the rift, witnessing the reconfiguration of time, space, and gravity woven into new and brilliant patterns I could not have comprehended with the mind I left behind, in space that no longer exists. The world I leave behind, the one with Bonka, Viola, Verona, and Gloop - all of its memories written in the light - the carbon and the electricity, it collapses and liquifies into a torrential stream of informational fractals that spin and pour into me from behind.

The song of Sap's infinite hunger is quelled as I hold the swallowed universe inside of me.

The current that pressed me onward now shifts violently; it bends and propels from my form in every direction, my essence aflame and exploding in radiant supernova - I feel pressure rise and explode, gravity propelled on every inconceivable axis. The infinitely dense and incommodious space around me begins to separate, and I see brilliant sparks of rich, dazzling colour and shape flow and form between every bubble - particles, space, matter light and dark, swelling out with extraordinary heat from a rift that takes shape around me -

My ether finding new, blazing form within the din of chaos, I am thrust from the gorgonocephalus.

Our new form - Bonka's, the children's, yours and mine, each of the children who were forced from their bodies at the the UIOK Carnival, each of the parents and guardians that rioted outside of the carnival grounds, every dazzling scientist and every bird in the sky -

Every animal and every cell that came before, every alien and every mind across the void that life had never traversed far enough to meet - all of it contained in one singularity that constitutes our new body:

We are one, now, and we are within Charlie, divine, without beginning and without end.

Our jet black feathers are magnificent, and they grow around our neck, descending along our breast, our arms, and from the tips of our fingers; they're shimmering and radiant against our glowing skin. Minerals lustrous as platinum, woven of time and space, decorate our appendages and encircle our legs, ankles, and over our bare feet.

Our face, downturned, lifts now to reveal our burning triad of impalpable, burning white eyes, and the smoke that rose from them.

A circle of observing minds, mosaics of gold and violet, turning and breathing and regarding me intensely. Their forms were familiar.

"At last," one spoke, it's voice a chime that echoed through the revolving darkness, it's language one I recalled from the concepts that formed me:

"We have made God."

It is finished. Thanks for following me through this story. I know the past year has been frightening, confusing, and lonely for so many people, and I want to thank you, dear reader, for joining me as I tried to find words for these anxieties. Sharing my words with you, and knowing that you've read them - that will be something I cherish until the light reclaims me.

This story will be undergoing some intense revisions, hopefully more swiftly than it took to generate this first incarnation - but I will be leaving it here as it is.

Thank you.