NEON GENESIS EVANGELION: COMMUNION

Part II: "The Baroque Garden"

c. 7 billion years ago

Thought was denied her, and it was bliss. Luna could only feel. She could not see, hear, smell, taste, or touch, yet she was awash with a shimmering sensation she had not felt since the womb. A great rush of emotion and memory flowed around her. She could not help but melt with each wave, swirling into the sea of souls. This was not the emptiness she yearned for with every close of her eyes. It was something very much alive, fed by many streams, yet with a single gentle pulse, like the calm waters of her childhood lapping at the beach.

Luna became aware of form, something material. She was aware of a down and an up. Her head was cradled softly, her nose nuzzled against skin. Slowly but unafraid, she opened her eyes, knowing she was in Amun's lap. Their unclothed, unmarked skin was the same, and who was to say where one ended and the other began. Luna lay there for a while, unbothered that neither of them was breathing, feeling that gentle ripple through her entire being that said she was part of something more. Turning on her back, she looked up at the still forming image of Amun's dream-kissed face, big eyes and slight smile. Streaks of red seemed to dance across the serene woman's hair, as she languidly looked up and down the white sands. She seemed different to Luna—younger, ageless, perhaps just at peace. Luna could not quite remember if this was how Amun had always looked. She could not quite remember what she would see if she peered into a mirror. She was many things, now. The uncertainty it caused was soon overwhelmed by the perfect tranquility of the beach they rested on.

"I told you," said Amun, looking down into Luna's eyes, "that we were one. When we touched, we removed the barriers that divide and define us. We called the souls of humanity to join us in a divine communion. We are a new being, a billion hearts now open, bleeding into one. You and I are aspects of this whole." Her hair hung long enough to brush against Luna's cheek, red streaks gliding across the mess of black like the clouds across the sky above. They were truly on a beach. She had not just imagined that. Or was that why they were here? Because she wished to be? Had Amun pulled her out of the water? Their skin had dried by the time she had stirred. Perhaps time did not mean so much anymore.

Luna turned her face back into Amun's smooth belly. "I didn't ask for this," she murmured into the skin. "I thought I would have a quiet life."

"Being heir to a seaside inn was not what Providence had in store for you."

"I was so afraid when they took me away," Luna said, almost sleepily. "I never said goodbye to daddy. He thought they'd put me down a hole, all used up."

"He knows you are safe now."

"That isn't the point," she whispered, grabbing Amun's sand-caked wrist instead of elaborating on what the point really was. There was no regret or sadness anymore. The Communion was a transcendent being.

"It's alright now," said Amun, running her fingers through Luna's blue-black hair with her free hand. "Our secrets are the same. There is no dark place in your heart you need to fear. We are the same."

"Shouldn't I feel more… transcendent than this?"

Amun smiled. "You and I were blessed. We were the catalysts of the transcendence. You remember your dream now, don't you? We dreamed only of each other, long before either of us were able to remember. We saw parts of each other that should have been impossible to see. Before anyone else, you and I were connected."

Luna pursed her lips. Without knowing, she knew. "You and I no longer see a difference between our dreams and our waking world. We are of the Communion, but of all its aspects, we are the farthest removed. We cannot be satiated, if we are to dream."

There was no need to say she needed time to think. Amun already knew. They had time enough for contemplation, for sitting on the sandy shores of a childhood memory. Amun knew that as Luna closed her eyes, she needed only to stroke her hair, humming a glad melody. Whether the serene woman had heard it before or had created it that moment, Luna felt it suited the dream of a god.

With a clarity she had never known, Luna fathomed the totality of her race. The desires of humanity had remained unchanged since her hairy ancestors took their first upright steps. Humans possessed the insatiable hunger of an animal married with an ever decreasing number of predators to check its spread. Technology brought great wonder, while poisoning the world year by year, until sheer want brought self-destruction. It was all too simple a tale. Her father's sea-side inn had been a dream, unmarred by the realities of human nature. The truth had been revealed to her in the back of a van on the way to the her life as an object. To the men who pulled her off the beach, spilling her groceries across the winding highway, she was a contract for the Foundation. Her condition was not as important as delivering a living sample. She woke up with blood that took no account of the calendar. She could not remember what happened, and she could not find the residue of those men's souls, meaning they had died before the Communion. Luna found herself quite content with that. The introduction into the Foundation's experiment had shown her the truths of life, of power and society in a time of need. She was a girl when she was a girl. She was an interesting piece of meat when she was an interesting piece of meat. If her will had no part to play, there was no point in feeling one way or another about anything.

Standing with two bags from the corner store, Luna had politely told the men she could not come with them. She told them twice. Their badges and papers did not interest her. If there was no good reason to leave daddy without telling, she was not going. She had fought them as they dragged her in. Daddy had told her about older times, when nobility and honour reigned. She understood then that the world had always been sick, and always would be. The gentle breathing of the Communion soothed her soul, and faintly Luna sensed Amun's care. Her mortal life was a distant thing. But the Foundation's actions resonated.

In her great-grandfather's generation, a war had drowned the world in blood and metal. But, like all wars, this one incited great men to discover great things. Tearing up the earth in search of resources, the brightest minds from the victorious power stumbled across ancient ruins from a civilization that seemed both familiar and otherworldly. What had been buried deep for millennia seemed beyond human engineering, yet had clearly been made to be found. Wide pillars supported a ceiling high enough for clouds to form, carved with inscriptions of prophecy and warning. Years of pain-staking translation revealed dozens of scenarios, from the dire to the utopian. Four unique qualities were hidden in the world's population, and would soon emerge. Each bloodline carried within it the potential for human transcendence, yet if the bloodlines mixed, humanity would cease to exist. Despite this danger, the pillars suggested some proximity between the carriers of these bloodlines would tease out the transcendent qualities. The panes of glass in those interview rooms had been more than architectural masturbation. They had been well aware of the strange draw Amun and Luna had felt for each other. Who knew how many of the rejected ones had felt the same way about others. Luna understood now that the ruins had given them, for whatever purpose, the recipe for a slow journey to a higher plane of existence. Instead of seeking to heal the world and mend humanity's ways, the men who formed the Foundation sought to find an easy escape through this abstruse prophecy, and rushed the process, kidnapping "test subjects" and incinerating them when they failed to produce results. Two more wars and billions of deaths later, humanity had reached the end of their story. The Foundation had not intended Amun to reach Luna, but they had hardly taken precautions. Many on the board of directors desired the forbidden union, believing the end of humanity to be a door to something new. Luna found her bitterness fade with every passing moment within the Communion. Such things were history now, meaningless curiosities of a past that seemed half-imagined.

Amun had been an energetic child, bored by a privileged life that most in that age of barrenness would have been happy to have. She had always been open to fate's every twist and turn, with a smile and lively compliance even for her kidnappers. She loved her parents, but no more than she loved the waves or the wind. She had long felt something was missing, and the face she showed the world was meant to invite that lost thing in. She was incomplete until the day she wrapped her liquidy form around Luna. The fullness of their union was a feeling that reached Luna even in her contemplation. Luna had accepted the world not because it had something more to give her, but because there was nothing left. Even now, this unhappy thought incited Amun to nuzzle and kiss the half-sleeping god-fragment in her lap.

"Wouldn't it be fun to find out who made those ruins?" beamed Amun, sprinkling butterfly kisses across Luna's sternly focused face.

"I suppose," she said, finding her lips resisting her effort not to smile.

"We're transcendent, whether you like it or not," teased the sometimes red-head. "But I think the universe will reveal everything to us in time. For now, I feel there's something we must do."

The Communion hummed in the back of their minds, shared feelings of a billion souls made one. Luna felt something within her, something incredible, and the Communion wished her to share it with the universe. It was because they were not fully immersed in the Communion that they felt the need to do more than simply exist. The mystery of their bloodlines set them apart, the awareness of imperfection and need driving them to create.

Luna jolted upright, sending up a small whirl of sand. Amun was grinning, having just expelled a handful of marble-sized orbs. Luna cringed, squeezing her thighs together. Maybe that smiling fool had experience with that doorway as a mortal, but it was all new to Luna. Amun stood and placed a hand on her face, sending the thought of children and motherhood through her like an electric shock. Luna could hear the little balls hitting the beach between her feet. The idea of creating life seemed too promising to ignore, and the power of the thought frightened her. The Communion swelled with pride for Luna, calming her.

"These are going to grow soon," said Amun. "We should find somewhere to plant them."

"A few hours ago I was in that glass room, and now—"

"Are you sure it was only a few hours?"

Before that vista, Luna's scowl seemed forced, even to her.

"Come," soothed Amun, "don't let your mortal life be the design for your eternal one."

Luna breathed a sigh of surrender, allowing the Communion's good feelings fill her up.

"See," laughed Amun, "there's no point in fighting it. A divinity should look divine! Who wants to worship a pouting god?"

"Worship?"

* * *

Those little orbs, which would have embarrassed the flesh and bones Luna, wasted no time in expanding. By the time they had hurled the things into the void of space, they were the size of celestial bodies. They knew intrinsically that the moon-sized vessels carried each a precious seed. Orbiting their now abandoned homeworld, Luna and Amun pondered these seeds. No guidance had been left for them, only a desire flowing through the Communion. A desire to create, to spread out across the entire galaxy.

"Isn't it wonderful?" beamed Amun. "To think worlds will be filled by those tiny little things. They came from us!"

For a divine being, the Communion seemed to act on intuition, rather than wisdom. It was merely accepted that once flung into space, the seeds would find suitable worlds upon which to bloom. Luna found herself experiencing a sensation she had not felt in an incalculable span of time—anticipation. Stretching out her leg like a ribbon, Luna touched her toes to the larger of their birthworld's two moons. Wiggling about, kicking up the dust and dirt, she let her body fluctuate and grow, the rest of her flowing like a jellyfish as it dealt with the various pulls of gravity. She wrapped her arms around the cratered rock, linking fingers, burying her face in it like a pillow. Gripped by the realization that she had a purpose, Luna giggled, sending rippling waves through her watery skin.

"If the Communion's forgotten to become one with anyone back home," said Amun, "they'll be quite tickled if they look skyward now."

Blowing a storm of grey across her moon-pillow with a blast from her nose, Luna pondered what it meant to have no boundaries between dreams and reality. She could walk through the shambles of her homeworld, should she desire, or spontaneously manifest a beach, like the one she had awoken on. She could imagine and experience anything. Whether or not it was an experience shared by the universe itself seemed irrelevant. She had an inkling the Communion as a whole was enjoying something similar, a private existence of inward satisfaction. Though she could feel the great being of which she was but an aspect, she could not see it anywhere. The divine truly did exist on a different plane.

"We are still tied to the world of our birth," said her ever-attuned red-headed partner-in-transcendence. "You must feel it. Our bloodlines, we hold the same matter as those ruins that began all this. The vessels we created drew power from the world, through the ruins. The Communion will be anchored to this rock even when it is as barren as your new hug-toy. When our children have eaten up the ruins, I presume our great work will be done, and the Communion shall remain here in contemplation."

"But we can go anywhere, can't we? Quite an elaborate garden we're planting."

Amun swirled around Luna, her hair and form like rings around the pockmarked satellite. "Let's ride with one of our seeds," she said, her voice defying the vacuum. "They should start landing soon."

"Soon?"

"Yes, well, it is all relative, if you want to be Lunaish about it."

"Lunaish?"

Amun grabbed a handful of the quasi-solid Luna. "Never mind that," she said, laughing as she shook her head. "A celestial body like yours should always be in motion."

* * *

Luna's "pillow" had not been much larger than the sphere they found themselves inside now. Amun's scent hung sweetly in the air, reminding her that everything she saw now had once been inside the woman. A shallow sea of clear liquid coated the interior, repulsed in all directions by the two-pronged lance rotating in the sphere's centre like a compass. Amun splashed about like a child, hanging upside down from Luna's perspective. She was gazing bright-eyed at something in the inverted sea. It was a four-limbed creature with a tiny tail and cutely large head. It paddled around with its feeble limbs, Amun reaching out to touch it, always giggling herself silly a moment before contact. Though the "top" of the sphere was miles away, Luna could hear her companion's every squeal with clarity.

"My seed," she cooed. "The Seed of Life. She'll grow true and quick, a celebration of living." Luna knew her seeds were of Wisdom, of Knowledge. She just knew, and it was the same for Amun.

The spinning lance came to a sudden stop, and Luna felt their great vessel accelerate in the direction it pointed. She wondered what seeds might have been born from the failed "Green" and "Yellow" blocks. Perhaps some other world full of violent, greedy humans would discover such things.

Luna and Amun moved outside, to watch the vessel smash into the young, soft world selected by the lance. Whatever it had been pointing at, it had not been the planet's centre of gravity. They could perceive the surface move like leaves over water, bunching together and breaking apart over time, the great vessel becoming buried under shifting rock. The lance had been pointing at something already there. Amun raised an eyebrow, smirking. She knew Luna's mind, but she wanted to watch her seed grow.

Racing through a delicate atmosphere, between the clouds hurled up by the impact, Luna passed through the layers of the planet like water through a sieve. She came to a stop in a sealed chamber, dotted with pillars in a style the Communion recognized immediately. It was just like those ruins. With their collective knowledge, Luna understood the inscriptions, and there was no mention of bloodlines or transcendence. Instead she found instructions for the children of their seeds, with hundreds of predictions for what might befall a world seeded in any number of ways. Whoever had made the ruins on their world had made these, and she felt certain that all their lances were that moment seeking other such ruins, marking out suitable worlds for the seeds they traveled with. The Communion was pleased with this knowledge, hoping to contemplate and reflect upon all the paths life might take. Luna felt she might be projecting her own desires too sloppily, but the Communion seemed eager to witness her seeds grow, as they would create civilizations that resembled what came before transcendence. Would humanity err the same way, every time?

Returning to Amun's side, she saw her companion had no room in her heart for the ruins, not with her seed awakening. Her hair betrayed her delight, extending away from her into infinity, arcs of winged sunlight. With a patience possible only through their divinity, they witnessed Amun's children seep out, breaking into smaller amounts that took hold in all corners of the planet. Within a few dozen trips around its star, the world was covered in a quivering lattice of life, with no differentiation between flora and fauna. Dragging Luna by the hand, Amun dove through the still-forming atmosphere into the fruits of her "labour". Scattered sunlight shone through thick translucent forms looming above them, a world-hugging cathedral of curves and colours. Bag-like entities expanded and opened, sending vibrant yellow dust sailing on a lazy journey past wandering violet trees and their unquenchable roots. Following Amun's lead, Luna allowed her body to elongate and curve to compliment their surroundings. They broke free of the shifting canopy, taking mile-long strides through the kaleidoscope forest. Truly, they felt like gods now. Luna felt water droplets roll across her cheeks as they strode through clouds, breaking through into the unveiled warmth of the sun. Some part of her, painting mortal life with an undeserved nostalgia, imagined the two of them running through a field of wild flowers after a long nap, so long their skin had tanned and she felt like a new person.

"Beautiful!" said Amun. "Grow! I want you all to grow!" Vast extensions of the forest below spiralled up to meet their giant mother's finger-tips, dancing across the canopy as one might with blades of tall grass.

Luna felt the question of the ruins slip deeper into her mind, taking root. The Communion named him the "Builder", someone who would surely make himself known when the time was right. Amun had eyes only for her garden. No one was in a hurry. For eons, Luna became lost in her companion's bliss. She had never see anyone so unashamedly in love, without motive or machination. Amun wished for her children to grow and live with all her heart. The Communion wished it. The universe wished it. And while Luna's seeds sat dormant, leaking slowly, giving birth to microscopic creatures, Amun's thrived as no other form of life she had known.

c. 4 billion years ago

She had named the great lizard "Ko-Ko", because that was the cute noise it made when it had hatched just a few decades ago. It took pleasure in letting its maker ride it, and although the so-called wisdom from her seed had yet to make an appearance, she could tell the other animals were jealous. Amun had been frolicking amongst her issue with an unchanging enthusiasm for billions of years. Luna had been unable to keep up. Though she always felt a subtle wholeness when being near the red-haired divinity, existence was becoming predictable, millennia by millennia. She could foretell every word and mannerism of her divine companion. She could forecast every lurch and sway of life itself. While the emergence of larger life forms on her worlds were welcome distractions, she was feeling what Amun had teasingly called "the curse of wisdom". The Communion hummed contently on the other side of the galaxy, contemplating the garden the Builder was having them plant. The experiment had not missed a beat in three billion years.

"Don't let them get to you," she said, wrapping her pale limbs around the long neck of the pebble-skinned colossus. "They're just insecure."

Herds of plant-eaters watched with their blank eyes, munching contently, then dipping back into the immense river Ko-Ko waded through. When their heads came up again, there was more dangling greenweed to munch, and more staring to be had. In the distance, flesh-eaters prowled the riverbanks, clever enough to steer clear of the smooth-skinned sometimes blue-haired creature. Luna pressed her face against Ko-Ko's neck and growled a feeble "grrr". Her long-necked mount felt the vibration from her lips, and made a noise of his own, startling a flock of birds who immediately splattered a nearby family of grazers with the white goop of fear. She sighed again, turning her head to watch the flesh-eaters stalk.

"Nothing personal," she said, pushing her hand elbow-deep through Ko-Ko's thick hide. The long-neck's bleating sent ripples of din and panic down the river. With a straight-armed twist to the side, Luna sent a load of neck-meat across the water. She slipped into the river with a simple grace, followed by a slow shower of red and the collapse of the still twitching Ko-Ko. The flesh-eaters were beside themselves, one moment gaily leaping into the water, the next scurrying out with one eye on Luna. She rushed them, sending up a wake taller than her "human" body. Before the nearest set of teeth could decide how to react, she had her little arms around its box-shaped head. An indignant snort blew her hair about, the others shifting from foot to foot, wiggling their egg-grasping fingers in anticipation. She squeezed, tearing the stupid thing's head off. The slowest to flee took a chop from her hand, losing its leg above the knee. Until sunset she chased the giant reptiles down, moving through their frail flesh as if they were sand castles to be trampled. When the sun disappeared, its red light barely making it over the horizon, there was nothing left along the river to squeeze. She stood in the caved-in chest of one of the beasts, blood rolling down her bare arms, flesh caked upon her hands and fingers. There was a faint rustling of underbrush behind her, and she could tell from the tiny footfalls that it was a furry thing of some kind.

"Hurry up and learn to speak," she murmured. "Stupid mammals."

Though she left at once, it took her months to reach Amun's side. A part of her had ached ever since their last parting. They were a puzzle torn apart. When Luna broke through the clouds, her immortal companion was half-immersed in a city-sized flower, multitudes of brilliant pedals gently swaying, while yellow-white tendrils tentatively reached to their maker. In the distance, an almost humanoid behemoth lumbered across rolling hills, followed by vast avian flocks.

"Your colours are brilliant this year," said Amun, unwinding one of the flower's tendrils from her arm. Soft leafy growths were peeling off her like she was shedding skin. She had a closeness with all things that Luna could only envy. The Communion was joyous, relishing in the garden's spread across the galaxy.

"Amun…" Luna started, feeling her presence like an undertow. "I…"

There was no need for further words. The flower unwound itself reluctantly as Amun stepped forward. With a swift movement the red-haired divinity was holding her, entwining with her as if she were the flower. All coherent thought broke and scattered like the leaves from Amun's skin. There was no room for fear in the spaces Amun filled. They held each other until the flower had grown a mile further into the sky. The sun seemed to spin around them. Luna moved her lips and tongue against Amun's mouth, impulsively thinking she could become closer than they were. What an embarrassingly mortal idea.

Leaving the atmosphere years later, the warm comfort Amun had given her slipped away like a curtain. Behind it was nothing but the black, pockmarked with stars that would play host to worlds she had already seen. It was her. It was all her. She was Amun. She was the Communion. They were all one being. Of course she knew Amun's ever movement and sound. She had been talking to herself for three billion years.

* * *

A pang of loneliness came with each seeding. Luna was, in every sense, losing a part of herself. Amun relished in the ritual, feeling ever the more satisfied. It was infuriating. But this time, as the seeds left her body, she felt nothing, because nothing had changed. As Amun sped off like a comet after her children, Luna drifted near their homeworld. That useless rock. The Communion was worried. Concern filled her up, an unbearable pressure. I understand, she thought. I will tend to the garden.

Inside a randomly selected vessel, Luna sat curled up, one hand around her knees peaking above the liquid, the other hand stroking her seed. It nuzzled against her palm happily, then took off, swimming around her temporary home's equator.

"Pity you take so long to do anything," she sighed.

The lance stopped spinning. The vessel picked up speed. Days passed, and Luna felt Amun's presence. They were both heading for the same star. Quickly imagining the aim of their respective lances, she realized Amun's seed would hit the third planet from the star, while Luna's would hit the fourth. It would be another ten billion years before the fourth planet had enough sunlight to be habitable for her progeny. This was assuming the smaller fourth planet would survive her vessel's arrival.

"Come," she called to her swimming child. Amun's seed had already smashed into the third planet, a freshly formed, still malleable world. Her seed was eager to add to their garden. "The best part about having a child is not nursing them or cradling them in your arms," she said to the squirming little thing. "The best part is talking with your children when they are grown. I'm going to help you grow, and one day we'll sit amongst the stars and talk about all the things you've come to love about this world. I hope you find something."

Her seed made a weak attempt to crawl in to her lap, so she gave the smooth, delicate creature a push. It curled up and sent little spasms of love up through Luna's body. She wondered if her seed understood what she had said. It probably did not matter.

"You wait here like a good girl," she said, standing. The lance pointed true and steady for the fourth planet. Luna flew up to it, grabbing the butt with both hands. The Builder had written of this, the safeguard. Imagining the solar system she was about to enter, she pushed the lance slightly. The Communion flared up with concern. Even if Amun cared enough to glance away from her task, there was not enough time to stop the impact. A hammering anxiety began to rise in her, rushing through every aspect of the greater divinity. With minutes to go, Luna swelled in size, dislocating her jaw. Gripping the lance, she shoved it down her throat, breaking it apart with her tongue with each push. Its disappearance inside her was heralded by the muffling of the Communion's distress, a strange but not unwelcome feeling. She would have to thank the Builder for his interesting poetry, for showing her how to leave the glass room at last.

( To be continued. )