Writing At Random Intervals In or Around A Day: Day 21: There was a speech written to be given in case the first men on the moon couldn’t return home.
“Fate has ordained that the men who went to the moon to explore in peace will stay on the moon to rest in peace."
Neil and Edwin watched as the command module drifted along its orbit, destined by programming to change course and head toward Earth.
20 minutes ago, the two of them were supposed to reunite with the orbiting spacecraft. 20 minutes ago, they spontaneously lost all power. A short circuit? A part that broke off during landing? Neither of the two men knew exactly what, nor did they care anymore.
There was no back up plan if they missed this opportunity. Neil and Edwin understood the risk, the chance that they may not return home. It’s a risk every First Man on the Moon has to take.
In 30 minutes, the command module was above the horizon. So went all hopes of returning home. Neil, Apollo, and Edwin stood, stiffly side by side, watching it for a minute. The Apollo Lunar Module was nothing more than a cramped metal hut without power to run it. Its legs strong, and its feet firmly rooted in the moon dust, the lander was a fortress. During the incident, the men were frenzied bees, climbing up and around the insides of Apollo, seeking the snag in their electronics. By the last possible minute they could have made it, the two had scoured the insides and outsides of the spacecraft, to no avail.
The moment their time ran out -- and each of them were diligently keeping track on their wrists -- the panic evaporated and was replaced with a range of emotions.
Neil looked at his partner who was already looking back. He shook his head, Edwin nodded, and they both looked upward as the orbiting spaceship above them continued uninterrupted on its path. After all the screaming and running around and frantic flipping of switches and opening and slamming panels and doors, after all of this it was silent for a moment. Their hearts slammed in their chests, but were otherwise silenced by the lack of air around them. A silent, steady, slowing punching at the back of their throats that rang through their stomachs.
But they knew what could have happened, and this is it. They’ve already accepted it. Neil did at least. Edwin had a harder time, but he understood the risk.
Neil’s heartbeat was slowing, he was calming down. He didn’t notice this however, his eyes glued to the drifting away orbiter.
Edwin’s heartbeat persisted stubbornly. He wanted to be mad, but he couldn’t. There was no fault or blame. This was all just destiny, he thought as he started not to care.
Their protocol in such an incidence was to make a choice. They had enough tanked liquid oxygen on their lander to last weeks. So they could starve to death on the moon, or commit suicide.
Edwin knew he couldn’t kill himself. He’d never do it. He would survive. Or die trying.
Neil was more romantic. He saw this death on the moon as a privilege. He had no problem opting to take one of a pair of cyanide pills for his own honor.
Both of these men know this about each other, and stared back toward each other in speechless wonder. After the horizon had gone still, the two had thought all the thoughts necessary to continue. Each knew they were stranded. Each knew they would eventually die. Each knew how.
One would die fighting, and the other with open arms.
Write Every(ish) Day: Day 20: Something I did not write.
I woke up pretty early this morning and went on Reddit. I don’t usually reddit in the mornings, I’ve always been too afraid of losing track of time and being late for work. But today I had some time to kill after breakfast, which gave me a chance to come across this life protip by u/amla13:
“LPT: When forgiving someone who has done you wrong in a terrible way, the forgiving part is for yourself. Not the other person.
“I'll admit that I'm too young for reddit (14), but feel like getting the message out there because it is still important.
I'll keep this short and simple.
Until age 6, me and my father were best friends, until he got addicted to drugs and alcohol. This happened until I was 12, so my mom would never let me see him. He got clean a few years back, but married a woman who disliked me. Therefore, he did not want to see me. I've only just fully adjusted to accepting the fact that he is out of my life, but he relapsed in drinking last year. He has been trying to contact me, but I ignored him every time. The thing is: it was and still is too mentally exhausting for me to deal with him.
It started with his liver. Now, most of his organs are shutting down like clockwork. He is very sick and is practically pleading to spend a day with me and I've decided to give it a shot. For peace between the two of us.
I go and see him tomorrow before he gets moved to another hospital. I'm not sure what to expect.
Remember, forgiving is for yourself, not for the other person. Don't be afraid of giving forgiveness.”
Write Every Day: Day 18: Things I used to do but don’t do anymore?
I used to carry a sharpie around because I would draw all over myself all the time.
I kept my first ipod in a sock for a case.
I played football.
...and hockey, wrestling, soccer, baseball, basketball, parkour, karate, and jiu jitsu. The only one of those that I still currently do is the last one.
I used to eat tacos every day. But that’s only because I lived so close to that Mexican restaurant.
I ate sushi almost every day when I lived by that $2/plate place in college.
I rode my longboard everywhere in college
I rode my goped everywhere when I was in high school.
And my bike was my only method of transportation for at least 15 years. So weird to think that’s how I got around for so long.
I used to draw a lot. Now it’s more a less a thing I do when I’m bored.
I used to post a new status every day on facebook. I also used to comment a lot more.
I used to shower at nights.
I used to blast my music at max volume.
I’ve played the guitar, violin, and tried to pick up the drums. I only barely play guitar now.
I used to drive an SUV.
I used to sleep on the floor instead of my bed. Well, actually i still do that a lot.
I used to think I these would come easier than it did, but I stopped doing that like halfway through this post haha. Okay, done!
It’s how my mind works. Or maybe it’s learned helplessness. Or maybe it’s just a lack of motivation. But every time I try to do something routinely, I always get tired of it.
At the heart of it all, I really do want to be consistent with these things. I’ve also tried drawing once a week, or meditating in the mornings, or even stretching before bed. I can’t stick to a good habit. Especially if it’s something that’s just for me.
Well, I’m over exaggerating. I do have some good habits. Like I work out on the weekends to stay in shape (but that’s only been going for 6 months, I’ve stopped going to the gym after longer periods of time). I can keep my phone in my pocket at the table (at least when I’m with people). Some things have stuck.
But more often than not, and I’m talking like 90% of the time here, they just fade away. I think of them as old things I used to do, or something I tried once that didnt work. But I kind of wish I did stay with them, just to see how things would’ve turned out.
I’ve started and stopped this very blog like 3 or 4 times now. Maybe more. With years long gaps in between.
In the beginning my friend and I followed each other and showed off our creativity. It was casual, just innocent fun. I posted tons of pictures. Slideshows of things I thought were funny, and really was just saving them so I could look at them later.
That got old after a few months I think, and I just kinda stopped. So did he, I’m not sure when though.
Once, I tried making a “Philosophical question of the day” type of thing where I would pose stupid what ifs and offer my own answer. I’m pretty sure that lasted two days. Maybe three days and then it became “Philosophical question of the week” and then quickly (well actually quite a long time later) something like “Randomly timed philosophical question”.
This time around, its “Write every day”. And already my mind wants to move on to something else. I don’t feel like I have writers block or anything, I’m just a little underwhelmed at this new habit. I’m mostly talking about dream stuff or things that don’t make sense anyway, it’s not making feel like it’s worth it.
But it’s on a good run though! 17 days, and I’ve only skipped like 2? I could manage a few more. Like I said, I DO want to keep this up, I’m just a little too used to it, which makes me lazy. I can set a goal to get to 20 days? Thats 3 more days.
Writing this has already saved me from quitting one day sooner. Future me would love me if I kept going.
Buuuuut I make no guarantees.
This blog is about as important to me as it is to you, and I’m writing it for the same reason you’re reading it. Because it’s something to do.
Write Every Day: Day 14: Adding to that list of dream things.
5. The Alternate Vidorra I used to live in this neighborhood in Tustin called Vidorra. It was a pretty small, gated suburban arrangement of model homes. I moved away in the 6th grade, and don't have many real life memories of the place, save a few: learning how to skate and play hockey, hanging with a small group of friends. It was around that time I started dreaming of this neighborhood. Only it was mirrored around the gate, and things were generally strange there. While I still lived in Vidorra, my dreams of the alternate place were mostly nightmarish. Young me would get disoriented and lost in the reverse neighborhood. My bike would break down and I would be helpless. Alternate versions of my friends lived there, but they didn't know me. If I ever did find "my house", I would come upon it completely empty. No furniture or family inside. But all of this usually made sense to me because, in the dreams, I was always a visitor from my own real life Vidorra. So I kind of saw this place as a different neighborhood altogether, even though in the dream it was in the same place as mine, and looked exactly alike, only flipped horizontally. Nowadays when I dream of this alternate Vidorra, it's much nicer. I don't feel overwhelmed, and have actually befriended some of the people there. It's much larger in my dreams than in real life, I think because I only remember the place to scale when I was like 4 feet tall. One of the last times I was there was for this crazy party with pirates and old famous actors, but I was there looking for somebody to help me with a thing. Pretty vague, but yeah. So this place pops up in dreams every few months or so, and I usually visit it on an errand like that. 7. The really long men's room This one's weird, but it occurs enough times for me to remember it so yeah. Sometimes I'll be running around in a building or a house in dreams and I'll see a familiar door. I always know what's behind the door when I see it, but for some reason I'm always surprised to see it. It usually comes out of nowhere, but I also usually tend to need it. It's a huge public men's restroom. Like super long, longer than any bathroom needs to be. It also has actual baths in it. Like a row of 10 porcelain bath tubs with urinal walls dividing them. There are hundreds of urinals on the walls, at different heights and different brands. There are dozens of varying sized stalls with different kinds toilets in them. Some like those super fancy Japanese ones, some regular toilets, some like those super minimal Japanese ones. The place is also pretty disgusting. Like gas station public bathroom gross. The tiles are white, pink and red, all the stalls and dividers are different shades of tan or gray. It's a place I never really want to be in long (but I have tried one of the bath tubs). Sometimes I do go in there for some dream peeing (doesn't translate into reality, don't worry), but most of the time I'm running through the bathroom like a shortcut. It's usually in a big building or a house between two key rooms, and I can run through it as a shortcut, or use it to lose somebody or something chasing me. Other than that I'm not sure why it recurs so much.
Write Every Day: Day 13: A dream from a few years ago.
Found an old dream journal. Well a failed one. I wrote like 3 dreams in it and forgot about it. Here’s one that stuck with me. After reading it over myself, I’m noticing I was already writing about my dream things without even knowing it.
These are from over 3 years ago, but in it, there’s my multi-storied house, the corridor/stairs I use to get to the attic, even the green field I see from the window of the attic. Anyway, If it sounds weird, remember I probably wrote it down at 3am, still half asleep.
Here goes:
“25th of January, 2012,
Series of dreams that leads to a big mansion party with high school friends and randoms. Mansion is 3 stories + a basement (Yes, the same house, this time without an attic...) I guess rooming with an old friend from high school, Daniel G., who has a dog. A yellow lab. Before the party, Daniel and I lock the dog in a room on the 3rd floor. the 3rd floor was also a loft, but it was on the verge of falling, so the whole floor was blocked off.
A nuke goes off during the party, but the mansion is nuke proof (gotta love dream physics). Anyway, the nuke went off during the daytime, news reports showed the world getting bombed. Everyone was trapped inside while the world burned alive.
The outside world became toxic and everyone remains stuck in the now self-sustaining mansion for years. Eventually, a leader, just a random dream person, not anybody familiar, steps up and starts a sort of government. Classes quickly develop.
The leader becomes corrupt with power and he decides that the “lower” class in the Mansion is the root of all our problems. He ends up forcing them to live in the basement a few weeks after he took power.
Daniel is killed in a struggle against the dictator. The people are beaten, and morale is low. The peoples depression takes over. Realizing that their families and friends in the world have all died, being trapped with strangers, stuck in the basement, etc. Depression turns into madness over the years. The people start to believe the leader is a divine king, with all encompassing rule over the planet. He might as well have been.
Human rights movements start occurring. People from the “upper” class start visiting the basement, providing us food/help/comfort. We eventually arrange a coup. We want to assassinate the leader.
We find gasoline from somewhere and storm a a meeting of the upper stories. They’re all older (like in their mid 30′s), in formal uniforms/suits. The leader is all decked out in Nazi-esque attire. He’s in front at a desk, the whole floor was converted into a meeting hall.
I dump the gasoline on the dictator and some of his own people hold him down while someone from the crowd sets him on fire. He burns at his desk while everybody runs down a corridor at the back of the room. At the end of the corridor is a door that leads to another winding staircase we run up these stairs like it’s a part of the plan. Thing is, the winding staircase is completely new to us. It should be outside the house, but its dark and just feels like part of it. The stairs go up 3 levels to a square landing with a shuttered window on one side and nothing else (I drew a picture here of what it looks like, a pretty apt diagram of the attic I wrote about earlier haha). We seem defeated until somebody opens the shutters to the window and behind the shutters is an orange light, mimicking sunlight, and a door.
Opening the door, there’s an entire landscape on the other side. It’s like that door was at ground level, even though we had all just climbed 3 stories. The landscape is broad, green, with blue skies. A land of milk and honey. We celebrate for a day.
After the celebration, I secretly go back through the door, to the house.
The time the door opens to the front of the house, rather than the hidden room. It’s like I’m opening the front door, and stepping in from outside. The first thing I see is the charred desk, where the dictator sat. I check the rest of the house. I hadn’t seen it since we’d been forced into the basement, but they had changed a lot. Removed any decorations and made everything gray. The second story was a living quarters, with the same gray, dull, uniform style.
I check the third floor and see that it is mostly untouched. The unstable floor mad it inaccessible, so nobody ever checked on the dog. I go look and see the dog is still there, and alive. I notice its strangeness, it having been several years since we put him there. But he hasn’t died, or even aged more than a few weeks, showing just the initial signs of starvation.”
And that’s where it ends. I’ll put another one in some time in the future.
Write Every Day: Day 11: This is such a weird coincidence.
I read about a thing today on Reddit.
We’ve all heard the stories of how the people on flight 175 were able to make phone calls to their loved ones during the attack and all that. This thing today was a transcript of a voicemail left on that day.
“Hey Jules, this is Brian. Ah, listen...I’m on an airplane that has been hijacked...if things don’t go well, and they’re not looking good, I want you to know that I absolutely love you. I want you to do good, have good times, same with my parents. I’ll see you when you get here. I want you to know that I totally love you. Bye, babe.”
It got me thinking. In hopes that this is something that I only ever wonder, how hard would it be to leave such a voicemail. Or how much harder would it be to receive it?
If you were somehow able to choose, would you pick to answer the call and have one last conversation with your loved one? Or would you pick to let it ring, and go to voicemail, where you know your Brian will leave you the perfect message to replay over again whenever you need it?
That’s all I got for today. Just a little thought.
Write Every Day: Day 10: Trying to make sense of the world.
Has anyone been so far as to do what like want they to even been to for? I can’t even to like this thing does it want to play it now for me. You would not want them now its yours and mine forever alone. Singularly, plurally, in terms of rhetorically speaking louder than every time I sprouted bears.
So, really, has it? Anyone? If you did so wear for fair now, then say it. Don’t relax it down town shepherds are lying to you now don’t try it. You can’t. You just can’t. But I did it to torn down foreign papers for me in French. Didn’t you get it now? Now we can over there organize their dents of or not as to do what it didn’t like in the first place winner is for me to find what I’d rather not tell can’t not undo for it is too long and stops. Or keeps stopping, going to play it now for me. Would you not then want it yours now and alone forever turn? Rhetoric. Leaking spout or even thirty I’m tie browed spears.
It has really so, anyone you did if wear so fair now for it. Say then, don’t relax. Sheep herds heard it down lying to town now you try it. Don’t, you can’t, not just you can. Didn’t it down papers but I’d to follow it, not understand it for you or me my own mine should shift it down to France. Not now, get now it not won it one now. Okay, so to recap it did like, not like not to forgive it for me and for its fairly won now it said doesn’t it do? Alright then. So for following me you do did not for it now place. It keeps stopping. Plugging to go it now its for you.
4. The Bunkbed
The attic is kind of artsy in a way. It has this great view of a green field viewed from its circular window, a hole about my shoulder-width in diameter. The inside of the attic is dark, but neat. It’s almost completely empty, so you can see the rectangular shape of the room. The room has wooden floorboard, but its faded gray, which blends into the light silvery gray walls. The ceilings are vaulted, and meet in a line right above the center of the room. It’s like being inside a box with the lid flaps resting on each other in a house shape.
The only thing in the attic is a single bunkbed. You see it immediately when you enter the room, usually lit up by the window, like a spotlight. The bottom bunk looks and works like a normal bed.
The top bunk is kind of normal. The mattress is a regular mattress, only a little lighter because its on the top bunk. If you lift it though, instead of a floorboard, or any railing system, there’s a portal (for lack of better words)(I take it back, portal is a great word). It’s like opening a secret door, hidden in the floor. Except the door is the mattress on the top bunk, and it should open directly into the bottom bunk, but instead it leads to a completely different room.
Since you’re still in the top bunk, you have to climb down into the portal, so you enter and exit this new room from a rectangular shaped hole in the ceiling. This room is completely dark, unless lit by a floor lamp. One of those standing lamps with a paper lampshade. It lights up the entire hidden room, which is two or three times bigger than the attic it’s in.
This attic is where I keep all of me dream possessions. Any dream where I’ve imagined having something I don’t have irl, that thing is kept in this room. Once, I had a dream where I won free ipods for life, but I had to pick between a lump sum of ipods, or have it divided over the next 50 years or whatever. I chose the lump sum and just put them all in the bunkbed. There’s a pool table in there from some other dream. There are desks with drawers full of notes and pictures containing me and friends in dreams, or me and dream characters. I have a bin full of soaked cell phones from any forget-to-take-my-phone-out-of-my-pocket nightmares.
It’s kind of set up like a library, indexing different dreams, but also has a main area like a small lounge in the middle, surrounded by shelves for small items, or large things sitting right on the floor. The middle area is a circular area of carpet, with a couple of chairs facing each other off to one side, and a pool table on the other.
So yeah, this place is pretty special to me. Or at least to dream me. There are a lot of memories there, it’s kind of a time capsule/mancave. I’m supposed to be the only one who can reach this place, with all those tricks and tidbits.
Well, the most recent time I’ve visited the the bunkbeds (my shorthand for going to the attic and into the room under the bunkbed portal thing), things were wrong. This last time, the room was completely bare, empty, except for a wooden chair and table for one. On the table was an aluminum tray with pills and drug stuff all over it, an empty beer can and a smoking cigar (”Whoever was here must’ve just left!”). The floor was covered in dust and other beer cans, with outlines of my old shelves and stuff.
So yeah, that’s what I got going on there. I’m just waiting for another dream where I’m there again, so I can maybe get some closure? or figure things out...I really have no control, I just remember what happens.
I have a few recurring dreams I’d like to write down.
I’m not sure if I’m using the term correctly, these aren’t repetitive dreams, like in those horror movies where people keeping having the same dream of dying on a train or whatever.
These are like places or things or events that constantly reappear in my dreams.
I’m sure I won’t remember all of them right now, but I’ll just start the list and add to it later if I do:
1. A really tall house.
Well this one started a while back, I remember dreaming that I lived in a mansion. I had dreamed up a house so big that I could get lost wandering the halls. This house kind of evolved into other things, but in my dreams, it’s always been the same house. It’s like home. Anyway this house is home to a lot of other recurring dream things, so I’ll start here.
The house as I know it now is a 4 story thing. But its been different amounts. It’s a pretty prototypical house from the outside, but the inside can be pretty crazy. There are at least 2 kitchens in the house, sometimes 3, and theres always at least one on the top and bottom floors. Other people live there too, I think my parents and sister, but also a few friends and dream randos. I remember once screaming to somebody else in the house, “Why are there 2 kitchens upstairs?!” and they replied with something like, “Just wait it out!”
Hmmm, other things about the house. From the lobby area in the house, you can see all the way through to the sky, through a giant skylight. Sometimes there are way more than 4 floors, like the thing just explodes to like 20 or 30 stories. Usually when that happens though, I’m having a bad dream or am in a rush or something, and I can usually navigate the house just fine, even with the new floors. Another cool thing is that all the floors are connected by 4 spiral staircases that start at the lobby, they form like a helical column all the way to the top, and the floors expand outward from the stairs in a circle (even though from outside, the house is obviously not circular. Its a dream).
My two favorite rooms in the house are the basement and the attic.
2. The basement.
The entire basement of the house is a shower. Like seriously. For some reason, in my dreams, I have a lot of recurring shower related things, and I become really excited in the dreams when they happen. Especially regarding the house. There was a time where I’d be arguing with other people in the house about adding more showers, then I’d either convince them or go behind their back to put showers in bedrooms and hallways and wherever.
So the basement is my masterpiece. I think I got the others in the house to agree to this giant community shower for some reason. Sometimes the shower is full of people, like a locker room, but most of the time its just me either passing through it, or using it real quickly. It’s just that though, its always used for showering, nothing sexual or weird haha.
The room is as wide as the house is, the whole floor covered in blue and white tiles, in no specific pattern. Some areas are all blue or all white though, they split the room into different regions. The entire ceiling rains when you turn the shower on. You can also have it the ceiling track you, and rain over where you walk. You can have a walking shower! I think that’s pretty cool.
Anyway, I could go on for a while about this place, but it’s really just a giant shower that I like because I think its cool.
3. The attic.
This is totally different than the basement. The attic isn’t really what I love about these dreams. Getting there is pretty cool, but what really matters about the attic is what’s in it.
Getting there is pretty cool because I’m the only one in the house that can do it. Well until recently, but that can be it’s own post.
So I’m the only person who can access the attic, but I can invite other people to follow me. In order to get there, we start at the top floor of the house. On one wall is a window and a hallway right next to each other. If you look out the window, you can see outside and all around the window, like its the only thing on the wall. But right next to it is a hallway, leading in the same direction as the window points out. It’s a short hall though, and ends in stairs. They climb a couple steps, turn right at 90 degrees, climb again and turn again to face back into the wall. It seems like a dead end at the top of the stairs but I can push the wall open (this is always a showy stereotypically dreamy thing, where I push calmly on the wall, and it opens all dramatically with a soft light behind it)
I love showing this part off to dream characters. I usually only bring close friends, or people I want to impress here. It’s a kind of impressing process. Anyway, the wall opens into a square hole about the size of one person. In the past, it was the perfect size for young me to step through. Now adult me crawls through the opening, it takes a minute.
The attic is completely unique floor from the others. It’s pretty small, with gray walls, maybe 15 square feet, and completely empty except for a brown wooden bunkbed on the wall to the right. On the opposite wall of the entrance is a circle window that shows the opposite sides landscape. It’s paradoxical since the rest of the house is so wide, the fact that this window could be on the opposite wall doesn’t match where the room is or the rooms width.
I’ve kinda run out of steam for tonight, I’ll add to this list in a later post.
I spent the last couple of days writing up this short. So this is going to be my W.E.D. for those days. Uh....it’s a little out there, but I hope it’s enjoyable. I’m definitely not done with it yet though, but I think I found an okay place to stop. I’ll continue the story later if I feel like it. If you’d like to read it, go ahead.
I created my first sentient civilization as a child. I still remember them. They say you never forget your first following.
Both my parents were Omnipotents. They each ran a cluster of successful planets, my mother is even opening a new Uni to store some private projects.
I started my training right out of infanthood. I have vague, but fond flashbacks of my view as I lay on my back at nights, making uncoordinated gestures toward a tiny floating circle of orbs dangling over my crib.
My parents created this planetary toy themselves however, and populated them with simple creatures: fish, birds, cute little land critters. They were pretty successful Omnis, even by the time I was born, so some tiny orbs like these were childsplay. I have vivid memories of being alone with those pseudo-planets. Reaching up to the closest orb and feeling the thoughts of the birds as they migrated the tiny planets. The blissful ignorance of the animals, just existing on their own lands, moving in and out of sight. I loved those planets, and I loved those animals. I wonder if they even knew I was there with them. I wonder if they loved me to.
Most Omnipotents don’t remember these type of things. I’m still not sure if that makes me special, or immature.
By the third grade, I was advanced into the Planetaries, a curriculum usually reserved for adolescents. I was creating full-fledged gas giants by the end of that year. Compacting the gas into dust and rock took another semester, and a year later, I began creating people.
Other Omnis my age were still learning about Unis and how to navigate within them. All that came second nature to me. While they learned that, I was creating people with near graduates.
They don’t tell you how long it takes to figure out how to make a creature think. We usually start with micro-nations -- we organize groups of cells to be near each other and develop a function. They become cooperative clouds of single celled creatures, which eventually behave and act like a single life form. A micro-nation which can replicate itself and spread is every Omnis’ first rite of passage. It shows an Omni’s creative process. It demonstrates a mastery of cause and effect. It gets you into your first Uni.
Creation is pretty straight forward. Omnis start with a Uni. Each Uni is unique. They have their own standard matter, or none at all. They have their own physics and properties. All of what you create is affected by these initial conditions.
In training, we always work in groups. Usually, by the time an Omni begins Lifing, he or she would have at least a decade of schooling under their belt. I was fast tracked. I was half the age of my group mates.
Even so, I thought they were so simplistic with their creations, predictable even. We were given a Trainer Uni, and right away they started churning out stars and planets. What an easy warm up.
I focused my efforts on a planet that had formed naturally in our Uni. This happens occasionally, if the right ingredients just happen to be near each other and a star. Anyway, our true gift is in manipulating Unis, not creating things in them from nothing. While my group mates wasted time pushing dust and gas together, I was fiddling with my planets details.
Within a new Uni, the elements and physics provided make planet building a straightforward process. What sticks together stays on its own, and what is driven apart separates on its own. We just make sure the right amounts are mixed.
But within a new planet, all of that is magnified to an extreme scale, where even the parts of the Uni that seem stuck together are really sliding around each other, melting and bubbling through itself, sometimes even vaporizing into the air. The other Omnis don’t fully understand it, but there’s a secret in that chaos that could change Omnipotence altogether.
So while my partners set up their assignment with hundreds or thousands of brewed-up stars and planets, I cultivated this one I found. I overheard one of my partners bragging nearby about a galaxy he had created, populated with unique and beautiful planets. I took a look and he was right, they were amazing, his skill was to be admired.
Still, creating galaxies full of lifeless planets is not what we’re here to do.
My world formed itself, and when I found it, she was a sad show of a planet. Red and blistered, cracked land leaking its own red hot insides into space. These are simple fixes though, and if an Omni really cares about a planet, they could fix it in a week and have a great foundation for life. But most Omnis are prideful and refuse to work on planets they didn’t just get right the first time.
That’s why I picked this world. I had no effect on its creation, but I could still change it to my liking. So I did. By the time I was finished with what used to be just a rock, it had its own eclectic beauty. No two locations on this planet were exactly alike. I brought it close enough to its star for a consistent weather cycle. I gave it a quick spin, her days would be short, just several hours. I flooded it with oceans and raised mountains and plains for land. By the end of it all, I was really having fun. I had done amazing things to the planet, but I couldn’t help but throw some in for show. I moved some stars around for night time decoration. I made it rain crystal clear so that it has a beautifully colorful effect on the sunlight. I even brewed up some micro-nations and sprinkled them around the place. These lifeless masses add a neat shimmer to the water when you see my world from a distance. All of this took exactly one week, and when I was happy with my work, I took a break to see what the other Omnis had done.
My group mates had all created, or were getting really close to creating their “perfect world”. Or so they would call it. One of them formed a beautiful planet, in a wonderfully symmetric orbit around its two stars. He had also managed to get his planet to rotate just so that the same side was always facing the stars. He bragged that it was his gift to his people; a constant view of his masterpiece. Again, he was right about its beauty. It’s a shame his people will never get to sleep. I told him they’d probably have obscenely short lifespans. He scoffed at me as another of his creations lived out a scorching 3 hours on his planet. He smirked at me as he made more and more and told me how he thinks they’re lasting longer.
Another of them enlisted the help of his friends. To give them credit, their approach was quite unique. Like myself, my groupmate paid extra attention to his planets’ details as well. Well actually, he didn’t, his friends did. He had younger Omnis-in-training perfecting small aspects of the worlds he created. He tried asking me, but I was already hard at work on my world. So, while his friends created oceans and storms, mountains and trees, and even tools (for who? I don’t know), he focused his efforts at Lifing. He jumped between planets, checking on his subordinates and working mud and stone together. I’m not sure where he learned that strategy, but it’s going to take some time before probability starts working in his favor.
Seeing the way the others worked their projects made me think about my own. Had I done the right thing only focusing on one planet? Some of these Omnis had created thousands of worlds, some even millions. Why did I only pick one? And not even one of my own making?
Those seven days of complete attention to every detail on my world. I programmed every last atom of that world to be a resource for the people I will populate it with. The assignment wasn’t to populate a Uni with planets; any entry-level Omnipotent should be able to do that. The assignment was to populate a planet with life.
