Chapter Text
Let me ask you a question. A very serious question, actually:
Have you ever stopped and thought “Am I God”? I know this is a weird thing to ask considering that, obviously, none of us are in any conceivable way divine beings. I’m certainly not omniscient, the Jiko aren’t omniscient, nor are the Groogae, the Yuyu, the Kraahthad, the iA;’h, or any other fourth dimensional species that I know of. Snik, I’m almost certain that you…
Wait, what are you? You’re human, right? Right?
Oh, good. Good. I thought so. You have that distinctly human-esque attitude that…
What was I saying? Oh, right, the god thing.
I’m certain that you, a human, aren’t a god either, but I’m asking if you ever thought you were a god. Say, for instance, you’re sitting in the park one turn and look down and see some ants scurrying through the grass and you think “Wow! I must seem like God to them!” and suddenly you’re hurling like mad through this egocentric train of though, reflecting on how you could be the only macro-sized being that little animals like flies and such will ever behold.
Why do I ask? No, this isn’t curiosity. This is an actual experience a friend of mine had once, but maybe a hundred times more profound!
Okay, you said you’re human, right? Does that mean you’ve read Frankenstein, that story about the man who accidentally creates another man and then everything starts to get very, very existential?
You haven’t read it? Oh. Okay, never mind. But in any case the thing that happened to my friend—her name is Taggi, by the way—is kinda like the thing that happened to Frankenstein: we created life. We created a lot of life, actually.
Look, I’ll start from the beginning, okay? I think everything will make more sense to both of us once I’ve laid all the facts on the table. Just relax, grab a piece of burned flesh (or whatever humans eat), and sit down on a comfortable pillow, and seriously listen to everything about to tell you, and maybe keep this anecdote in mind whenever you write a story or play a video game, or just generally toy with anything or anyone you think is entirely virtual.
Comfy? Good. Let’s begin.
My name is Mewllra Kat-Addu, and I am what you would probably call a librarian, albeit not entirely of the sort you’re more familiar with. In fact, some might say a more fitting title for me would be either custodian, or maybe vicar if you’re feeling romantic. The bottom line, though, is that I’m part of an ancient order known as the Ztip Otoro-un Nuziri, or The Gatherers of the Archives of All, as it translates into your language. As the name suggests, the Ztip Otoro-un Nuziri is dedicated to collecting and recording knowledge of every conceivable sort, from basic physical constants, to naturally occurring taxa, to memetic traditions, and even the everyday routines of common people like you. But the main thing we “collect” are universes. See, at the center of our order is a subquantum-computer network called Yggdrasil, and to say it’s big would be the understatement to end all understatements. As of this writing, we currently have exactly 56,096,316 orbital interfaces (that is, a huge moon-sized computer through which we can access the Yggdrasil network) located in the hearts of 7,600,893 galaxy systems in 674 universe, all of which being interconnected by a system of harnessed dimensional singularities, particularly those found in the centers of galaxies. But Yggdrasil is not only vast In it’s physical scale, but in it’s contents. As it’s name may suggests to those learned in human cultures—which I assume you must be, reader—Yggdrasil contains exhaustive records of every particle, cell, person, organism, place, event, story, planet, star, galaxy, realm, singularity, and universe the Jiko have ever visited and observed; a branch of the virtual tree dedicated to each and every scale, order, and domain of biotic and abiotic life that belongs to the fourth dimension. Imagine a reservoir that contains records of every event and it’s every consequence, fractaling outward from a singular quantum point in spacetime, onwards and onwards, continuously growing more and more elaborate, emerging and converging, spreading like an ethereal and unstoppable network of mycelium; the very intimate motions and intentions of the cosmos itself. Nearly everything from the painstakingly detailing spinning of every quark to the oozing and swimming of whole constance regions—the myriad chains of cause and effect across every event ever—all imprinted on a bit of data that occupies a hard drive just bigger than a grain of sand. Now multiply that grain of sand by 1,000,000,000,000,000, and you have what we call Yggdrasil. Impressive, no? The library that all other libraries borrow from, and I have the honor of overseeing it’s billions upon billions of carefully drawn branches.
Of course, Yggdrasil isn’t literally a tree. We just call it that because its holographic interface resembles a huge, prismatic plant. Nobody ever actually sees Yggdrasil because it’s all based on a system of subterranean crystal circuits that’s regulated by algorithmic singularities. The system works by encoding broader lumps of information (say, the laws of physics) into the movements of tads (which, in case you don’t know, are the quantum particles that make up the stuff that makes up the stuff that makes up quarks), which then facilities the recording of more specific forms of information (such as the orbits of star systems) into the spins of larger subatomic particles, and so on and so forth until the “largest” storage method, electrical signals such as the ones that govern the digital device you now hold, holds extremely specific information like the personal thoughts and experiences of a common sapient. In a way, it’s like taking real-life events in all of their complexity and flipping and mirroring it in a smaller, virtual scale. This information is then selectively retrieved by a translator algorithm and displayed in your standard 4-D hologram dome as a colored-coded map of “streams”: various forms of electromagnetic, gravitational, quantum, and physical radiation are depicted in different shades of infrared spheres; the movements of celestial bodies are traced in white or grey; higher dimensional activity linking two fourth dimensional events are bridged by straight black lines; the gene-spheres of A-Type through G-Type organisms are mapped in green or blue , while H-Type through S-Type are mapped in yellow or orange, T-Type through Z-Type are mapped in red or purple; and the plethora of meme-spheres are illustrated in ultraviolet colors. With all that said, you can imagine how beautiful Yggdrasil must be, no? A vast amalgamation of meandering lines like branches, spacial fractals like leaves, and concentric circles like fruit. To think, if this humble computer-and-hologram is any way a reflection of the structure of the actual cosmos then size must truly be an ultimately inconsequential thing. Trees within trees within trees, all the way up and down the empyrean scale. If everything is all at once infinitely large and infinitely small, then how could we ever be certain who is above who?
That, of course, brings us to our anecdote, where I—and, in fact, all of my sisters of the Ztip Otoro-un Nuziri—were confronted with this issue in perhaps the most jarring way imaginable.
The story begins on my home planet of Elloda, orbiting the black hole Jir-Dar Awa in the galaxy B’nr’herth-A:16. It had been only six turns since my return from the latest survey mission to a nearby exo-universe, and as such I was indulging in some much needed down time. As I write this I remain on Elloda, looking occasionally past my desk and through my window at the rolling fields and star-smeared evening sky, but at the present moment the beauty of this artificial dwarf-planet—which in itself is little more than a thin front for my local Yggdrasil station—is dampened considerably by my experiences. Not in a bad way, mind you, but I daren’t call my refreshed worldview “good” either. Rather, it’s an appropriately confusing appreciation for the prevalence and randomness of fourth-dimensional life, which is as but a supernova in comparison to the firecracker that is Elloda. By some definitions, nothing (well, almost nothing) on my home world is really alive in the way that creatures born from the chaos of abiogenesis is. The grass here consists of quasi-mechanical, wiv-fiber atmospheric recyclers that happens to look like grass, and the same can be said of the trees and moss and such that can found in the less sightly environments of Elloda. There are no animals here, and microbial life is kept to an absolute minimum so as not to interfere with the crystal circuits. There’s no weather, either, and for similar reasons, but also to maintain perpetually sunny days and cozy nights. There are few clouds, but they are immobile; there are oceans but they’re anoxic swimming pools essentially; and of course no tectonic or volcanic activity as we rather not have our continents exploding beneath us. As I said, almost nothing on Elloda is alive.
But that’s now. Less than an orbit ago I was of the very opposite opinion: I believed that Elloda was the gem of the universe, and for the exact reasons I just named too. Whenever I wasn’t deep within the tunnels, corroborating records or arranging helium stars according to what shade of orange they were , I would be lounging outside in my favorite gazebo, occupied by nothing if not a chapbook or the almost hypnotically simple view of the Ellodan landscape. The turn this episode began was, in fact, one such turn, and quite an ideal one if one were to ask me. Beneath the peaked roof of that little, wall-less building—embellished with garlands of bioluminescence ivy, tinkling wind-chimes, and an octet of sculpted owls standing guard upon the marble pillars—I sat in reverie so deep a by-passer might have thought I had died whilst still on my haunches. I stared vacantly forward, dimly aware of the kofspans upon kofspans of shallowly undulating grass blazing and shimmering like emerald fire in the pale light of Jir-Dar Awa’s accretion disk slashing across the dulling sky, my mind dwelling in some other place not quite in line with current space and time. I mainly concerned myself with my recent adventures with our last expedition to U-56.99>7<22.8 which, though fantastic in their own right, was almost entirely irrelevant to the present narrative. In any case, either by chance or by some strange Zalallan premonition, I was reflecting on the high strangeness of a certain universe where fully sapient people existed and thrived on planetoids no bigger than a speck of dust. I cannot say with confidence that that was the most miraculous thing I had ever witnessed (well, second most miraculous, following the forthcoming anecdote), but it was certainly enough to boggle my sense of reality and make me consider if indeed there was any limit to where and when the phenomenon of life can take root. Needless to say my role has much to do with with the observation and understanding of living things—in fact it’s beyond questioning that everything I do as a person ultimately boils down to satisfying what you might call “the big questions”, as is the case with all of us—but no matter what there has always been a firm, immutable barrier between the living and nonliving. Rocks? Nonliving. Fungus? Living. Viruses? Living. Magma? Nonliving. Iotolirka? Living. Mathematics? Nonliving. Yggdrasil? I think you see the point.
I’m digressing. I’ll stop.
In any case, I was in the perfect mood for the events that were about to take place—not quite to the point of an epiphany, mind you, but I was slightly more vulnerable than usual. Though it was behind the horizon, I gazed in the general direction of the main entrance to the Yggdrasil labyrinths, which we like to call the Hued House. Had the crystal death-tree that umbrellaed over the glittering spiral of doors and windows been any taller I was quite sure I would have seen the tips of the House’s amethystine branches poking up at the faint, dark disk of the black hole sinking in the firmament. In other words, my home was close but not close enough that I was expecting to entertain any company. Seeing distant ships or the swooping dots of lone Jiko was common, but I very rarely ever spotted anyone close enough that I could see the blacks of their eyes, let alone the liquid patterns on their wings. Thus I found it quite noticeable when one such speck, floating from the where the iridescent castle of Yggdrasil hid between the edge of the world and the fuzzy eternity of Jir-Dar Awa, began to grow in clarity until I could clearly make out the “V” of her flapping wings against the swell of white at the sky’s apex. Suddenly I wasn’t thinking about tiny people anymore and only had a mind for the encroaching visitor swooping and swerving clumsily like a bee loaded to the mandibles with pollen. I knew even before I saw her sunny yellow eyes or her unbrushed golden locks that the dot was my good friend Taggi, junior mathematician and our dear protagonist, for only Taggi flew with such shameless acrobatics. Had I known that the situation the young ‘Ko carried behind her was of the utmost urgency I would have flown to meet her but I had, alas, mistaken the evening visit as nothing more than a lovely reunion between two Jiko separated for five orbits. Just as I had failed to heed my all-too coincidental meditations, I was likewise blind to the markedly frantic thrashing of Taggi’s wings until she was practically soaring over the peak of a veranda, as swift and hot as a meteor bent on meeting it’s final destination. It was then, too, I had managed to catch the coming-and-going brush of Taggi’s eagerness snagging at my antennae just as she was spiraling tightly towards the ground. It wasn’t necessarily panic or distress, or anything glaringly negative, but, as I said eagerness; the sort of eagerness that, say, a human on the eve of their wedding might feel. That is to say, it was big and sharp, and possessed such a dizzying array of emotions that I could have sworn poor Taggi’s mind had literally exploded.
“MEWLLRA!” I heard her shriek as she parachuted to the ground on six broad wings the shape and color of angel eyes. She landed with all the grace of a falling branch, tumbling and stumbling on her feet the moment they slapped against the grass. Marvelously, once she regained some degree of balance she didn’t stop moving. She ran as if the world burned behind her, not even stopping to smooth her wind-blasted hair or cloth herself in her crinkled wings. “MEWLLRA! I DID SOMETHING AMAZING!” Taggi called again, her face beaming raw euphoria that bordered on madness.
“YOU DID WHAT?” I called back, dashing to meet her. Though I tried to share her excitement I knew that this level of expression was quite unusual for Taggi, who I’ve always known to be a jolly but still professionally reserved ‘Ko. I couldn’t imagine what could have gotten someone of her role so emotionally aroused, but I didn’t waste time guessing when my old friend was eager to tell.
“Mewllra!” Taggi squeaked breathlessly, seizing me by the biceps as she came to an ungainly stop. When she shoved her face close to mine I saw the full toll her accomplishment had taken on her, prompting me to wonder if it was not entirely wholesome. The paint on her cheeks, for one, had been absolutely ravished by a long-evaporated cascade of tears, and her eyes trembled feverishly with some dazzling sight that only she could see. She smiled, but the teeth grinning through her slight lips seemed crooked with the tainted sort of happiness a starved scholar may find in the depths of a black dream. “Mewllra! It’s Yggdrasil! It’s creating it’s own timelines!”
I blinked in astonishment, hearing the words but quite understanding them. “What?”
“You heard me. Yggdrasil is creating its own fictional timelines!”
“Taggi, what did you do?”
“Look, I admit I made in mistake in adjusting the gravitational density of Luruarga.” the blonde ‘Ko pleaded, twitching nervously. “But I swear I didn’t do anything beyond that! Yggdrasil is literally calculating and manifesting it’s own sequence of events based on one piece of incorrect information!”
“Okay, look, you’re gonna have to show me.” I said, cupping Taggi’s cheeks in my hands. “There had to be some misunderstanding. Yggdrasil isn’t programmed to run simulations.”
“But I saw it, Mewllra! I did!” Taggi whimpered, patting my own cheeks. “I checked it all three fazzing times. Do you seriously not believe me?”
My friend regarded me with a watery, wide-eyed gaze that seeped so much palpable heartbreak that my antenna very nearly wilted. Though I couldn’t help but harbor my misgivings, as any scientists is wont to do, I could tell from the cloud of divine confusion haloing Taggi’s head that she indeed find or did something that was entirely incongruous with mundane phenomena. “I do believe you, Taggi.” I chirped slowly. “But I don’t want to talk about it out here. Take me to the Crown Garden and show me. And then we can discuss this from an open and logical perspective. Okay?”
“Okay.” Taggi moaned as her nose pointed downwards.
“But first we’re going to grab you some cookies. You’re no doubt very…”
“No! I need to show you Susolland immediately!”
“Taggi, you know it’s good to…” My maternal advise died on my tongue as Taggi’s desperate demand processed and spawned yet another bottomless question. “Wait, what the faz is Susolland? There’s no such place in the catalogues.”
“Exactly!” Taggi giggled girlishly. “That’s what I’m saying. Susolland is part of the timeline Yggdrasil created. It’s a planet, Mewllra! A fully developed planet with its own animals and gravity and continents and even people, who have their own culture and language and everything!”
“People? What do they look like?”
“Like Thr-Shak-Arians, but squarer and with more bubbles.”
“D-Types, or…?”
“K-Types, but they have some metabolic similarities to R-Types.”
“Astatine?”
“No, their atmosphere is about 62% chlorine, 31% nitrogen, and 7% radon. But they do ingest astatine as a liquid.”
“War god? Herb gods? Mother gods?”
“The Bleeradaragra Pantheon, consisting of the Holy Eight Sky Fathers who brought the Vitiagana people the art of procreation. Aaagarraaha, Fula, and Cinr’Nav, to answer your questions.”
“The four fundamental forces? Those are all intact, right?”
“The four forces, the laws of momentum, the entire periodic table, the gravitational constant, speed of light—all of these things and more are present and perfectly in line with real-world physics.”
“L-language?” I stuttered.
“Chitgro-boodo-pum-pippy-fraggr.” Taggi sang with such an obscene but natural lucidity that it at last convinced me she was either telling the absolute truth or she had gone hopelessly mad. “That’s a Susolan language. It means ‘Let us go to the rainbow tree’.”
I was speechless. Like a mind-altering virus of the most bafflingly addictive sort, Taggi’s enthusiasm infected me with every bit of trivia she seemed to pull from thin air. If, indeed, Yggdrasil was creating it’s own algorithm, and with that writing it’s own data and constructing uncannily consistent virtual worlds, then this would be the most important development of high computer science in history. I had to see this. “You know what, Taggi? I don’t want any cookies either.”