Frank coiled around his throne of dew. Around him stars bloom and fade. Each of his million arms cradled a bubble, in which new worlds were born and old ones decayed, each filled with billions of souls who lived and loved and dreamed and died.
“Hello, child”. His form slithered and looped around Pip, a million eyes transfixed upon her.
“He…hello, Father.” His was Father. He was Mother. He was the One and the Many, the Beginning and the End, the great Worm, the Serpent who gave birth to her world and who will devour its end. All who lived would journey to him in death.
She was dead.
Pip remembered. For the first time memories came to her in a flood of images, her memories, untangled from the lives of her brothers and sisters. She was many, now she is one. It was peculiar. For the first time she felt her limbs, her armoured carapace, and her wings. They fluttered.
“Your next voyage is that of a human.” An arm extended towards her, upon its palm the mirage of bodies entwined. A new life was born. It was to be hers. Pip felt her wings descend, her hard shell melt into flesh and skin, and memories of her many siblings fade away.
“It…. It’s so lonely.” Said Pip, that sensation of belonging torn from her. “My brothers and sisters and I were one.” She remembered being part of them; like how her limbs and body were unified by single will, her will, her many thousands of siblings were bound together. They tended their hive and reared the young. She was a warrior who battled monsters. “I… We…” Her memories became confounding. “I this what it’s like to become human? To have memories?”
“Yes.” Said Frank, his arm retreating as many thousand worlds were brought to her view.
“How do they know? Father? That what they see is what others see? That how they feel is how others feel?” Pip asked, puzzled, and thought of how she and her siblings used shared a mind. She was warm and full and… complete…
“That is why gave them sight,” Said Frank. “I gave them sight and touch and smell so they could perceive, and I gave them voice and reason”.
In one of the bubbles Pip saw humans of different shapes and sizes and colours come together to build machines that reached to the heavens. In another, they clashed, clad in metal, tearing into each other leaving floods of crimson. Pip shuddered. She felt the joys and the pains and all the while the crushing loneliness closed in.
“But how will I know?” Pip didn’t understand. “I remember our home, the greens, the earth, the honey, but how would I know that they saw what I saw? That they feel what I feel? How will I stop feeling so… alone?”
Her transformation was almost complete. She felt her eyelids for the first time, and they were heavy.
“You will not.” Frank said slyly. He reached out and arm and gently picked up Pip in her frail new form. “It is my gift and my curse. Billions of people have walked their worlds and as will billions more. They had hopes and dreams, likes and dislikes, lives and memories. You will spend a life time searching for echoes of yourself in others, and till death you will never find it. To be human is to be alone”.
Pip is sound asleep. When she opens her eyes again, she will live anew.
“Humans are my most curious creation.” Frank mused to himself. His arm reached across time and space into the womb of a mother. In an instant Pip’s new life flashed before his eye. All the branches and possibilities. He smiled. “You have the wisdom to untangle the fabric of reality itself, to bend the world to you will, yet you will not know the heart of your fellow Man.”
On Earth, a mother wept at the sound of her daughters first heartbeat.
“But still they will love you, care for you, kill for you and die for you. Is that not amusing?”
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