You turn from the limp, still-warm body that used to be yours. The black-hooded figure beside you breaks into tears. “I’m not sure how much longer I can keep doing this.”, they say.
I rolled my eyes at the figure on the floor, and gave my new fingers an experimental stretch. It usually took a few weeks to settle in a new body, to map my muscle memory over the paths its previous owner had made.
This one was taller. Not the tallest I've ever had, but somewhere a little over the average. Lean muscle. Young legs.
Every time I transferred to a new body, it felt like how I'd imagine a snake might shed, sloughing off what had grown old and weary for something with a little more sparkle.
The Help was still crying on the floor. It was annoying when this happened, when their fragile little brains couldn't cope with what they'd signed up for any longer. I'd probably have to get a new one, and that was going to take up time. Ugh. Training was long and arduous, which is why I often kept the good ones through a few lives.
"Oh, get up," I snapped. I'd given it enough patience. "Bring me the clothes."
The Help drew itself up, sniffling, and shuffled away.
Your sister the goddess of light and her chosen heroes have sealed you the god of darkness away. You relax in your eternal exile, when you are brought back years later by your desperate sister. You know exactly what she wants and why she brought you back.
“Yeah, yeah, I know. Your turn in the nap dimension’s coming up. What’s the situation this time?”
“I went with the slow transition from healing light to a fire goddess of the Sun’s Vengeance. Scorched Earth and whatnot. You’re the soothing moon-slash-water god here to quench my unyielding light.”
“Sick! I love this one. Champions?”
“Here’s some coordinates for some promising youths from small villages, should take about five years to guide them into being true Heroes. I’m heading to the Volcano to spruce things up now. I have this really cool idea for a new style of chandelier...”
“Would you like me to add a few years onto the quest?”
As the follower of the Goddess of Light you have always respected the cycle of death and life as all life is equal. But seeing Goddess revive the Hero’s lover while children cry for their dead parents left a bad taste in your mouth.
Content warnings: references to war, references to a child's death
---
The last few months have been some of the best and worst of my life. The ancient evil who had plagued the lands had been toppled. There was a new King on the throne. A new Hero had risen, a new wave of peace had settled across the entire continent, the doors of the Temple of Light were open to all once again.
And my sister's baby son has died.
I suppose this requires some context:
My sister and I had come to the Temple of Light as children, after our parents and most of our home village had been slaughtered by evil forces encroaching at the Southernmost wilds of the kingdom.
By chance a band of wandering merchants had come across the smoking wreckage of the village, and they rescued the few survivors that we were. My sister and I were still very young, and so the merchants took us North to the Temple of Light, where we were taken in and raised by the acolytes there.
We were taught about many things. How to read and write, who all the great gods and goddesses were. About the cycle of life and death. We were taught how to grieve for the parents we were too young to remember, and for the family we had never known, and in turn how to teach the same to younger children, who grew in number as the evil crawled its way North.
I joined as a priestess as soon as I was able, but my sister's calling was towards shopkeeping, and she took up with a nice young fellow from the town below where the Temple was built into the side of a hill.
For a long time time, everything seemed peaceful.
And then the evil crept closer. The entirety of the townsfolk had to move into the Temple, and we had to bar the doors. The power of the Goddess of Light protected us from the evil's grasp. No monster, no seige weapon, nor malevolent entity could breach the Goddess' door.
We had provisions and magic enough to remain there in perpetuity. The sacred fountain became our well, and the sacred garden filled the bellies of all who sheltered there. Some among the clergy were blessed with magic enough to give us a taste of lost sunshine so that we did not grow dark-sick - though I am not one of those lucky few.
We spent three years inside the temple, riding out the storm of hate that swirled outside. I know not how many tried to seek refuge here and found the way barred. Too many, most likely...
My sister came with child some time into the second year hidden, and all who knew her rejoiced, for this was the first time in the eight years since she had been married that she and her husband had been blessed so.
He was a hale and hearty young thing, full of laughter and not shy to smile.
...
One day, a great blaze of Light drew us to the doors of the Temple, and they swung outward to reveal the Goddess of Light Herself. Behind Her, the great Hero who had ended the ancient evil, and behind him a vast, blue sky.
---
We rejoiced. Our time of hiding had come to an end, and our Goddess had come to us in person.
She was as radiant as we had been taught. Her skin was as dark as the night her brothers maintained, Her hair was a golden sun-cloud around Her head, and She wore a simple dress of pure silver moonlight.
The Hero, I never learned his name, was thrown a great feast, and the Goddess declared that She and Her Brethren had decided to grant him a Boon for saving all the people of the world from the ancient evil.
It was then that he asked for something that made my blood run cold, though no others seemed to flinch at the request:
His lover to be returned from the Dead.
The Goddess of Light seemed to dim just for a moment, though perhaps that was merely the dread that ran through me. She asked him if that was really what he wanted. He insisted.
She obliged.
---
My sister and her husband had not been at the celebration, choosing instead to keep their son's nightly routine and to not startle him with all the noise and clamour.
The next morning... They found him lying still in his cot.
Forgive me. I can not speak more of this until I have collected myself.
---
It was strange to see the townsfolk leave the hidden halls of the Temple. They felt empty.
There was much to clean up around the town after three years of abandonment, but the townsfolk were eager to do it. Soon, it hardly looked as if anyone had ever left.
We buried my sister's son under a sky he'd only seen once. We grieved. The world moved on around us.
Word that the Temple of Light had reopened spread throughout the kingdom, and over the next few weeks we began to see war-orphans heading our way once again. It was good work to distract myself with, and a number of the younglings show great promise in connecting to the Goddess' Light.
I cannot restore their parents, just as my parents could not be restored, but I try to give them the same comfort as I was given, and I hope that it is enough.
---
One of the children had a nightmare. They were soothed quickly enough, especially when a number of the young ones bundled together into the same bed. Not all of them have siblings as I did, but then again not all siblings are blood-bound.
Whatever happens to these children as they age, they will have each other, and that is something that warms my heart even when things seem bleakest.
I could not settle as quickly as the children, so I went for a walk though the Temple to gather my thoughts. A light ahead caught my eye, from one of the sacred chambers, and my pulse quickened. While I knew what I expected to see, the sight still took my breath away.
The Goddess of Light was sitting at the edge of the Sacred Fountain, a well no longer, staring into the water.
I watched from the doorway of the chamber, as She trailed Her fingers over the surface, leaving glowing gold ripples in Her wake. The sparkles faded, and She turned to look at me.
The Goddess' eyes were pure Light, and I was not able to meet them. I turned my gaze to the floor.
"My Lady," I said, bowing my head.
"You are troubled," She said. I nodded. "Come here. Sit next to me. Tell me what concerns you."
I did not dare to resist such direct orders, so I did as She bade and went to sit by Her. The Goddess was warm, warmer than any mortal being like myself. It radiated off of Her like a sunny day.
"I have been thinking of many things, My Lady. The children here have seen much darkness. My sister's son died on the day of victory. I've been thinking of my parents, who I never really got the chance to meet, and what they might have thought of how my sister and I turned out," I said, looking at my hands. "I'm not unhappy with my lot in life, but there are so many others who have and still are suffering."
The Goddess nodded, looking into the water again. "Such suffering will never truly be eradicated, I fear. When people help, it helps, but not everyone does. You worry that you are not doing enough, but you do more than most, so do not lose heart."
To heard such words from my Goddess warmed me more than Her presence did.
"You are one of my priestesses. I recognise your voice."
That surprised me a little, but I suppose a Goddess would take note of such things.
"Yes, My Lady. I was among the first to be brought here in the wake of the evil." I tapped one of my feet on the ground, feeling like I was a child again and speaking to one of the Elder clergy.
"There is a question in your heart," She said, and I felt her words shudder through me. "You may ask it."
"You restored Life to the Hero's lover," I said, turning to look somewhere to the left of Her face. "When everything I have been taught here about the cycle of Life and Death is that you cannot change it. Is that... true, that teaching? Is it something that only the gods can do?"
"There are magics," the Goddess said, slowly. "That can call back the Dead."
"Then why only the Hero's lover?" I asked. All at once I no longer cared that She was a Goddess. I simply needed to know. "Why not the parents of the children here who cry themselves to sleep? Why not my sister's son? Must we all have to save the world to deserve the return of those we love?"
The Goddess was quiet for a long moment, and now my rush of boldness was over, I feared that I had offended Her. Could She have me cast out of the Temple of Light? Would She do that?
"Taking back a life comes at a terrible, terrible cost. Not I, nor my brothers, nor any among the gods can turn that cost aside. So we teach that it cannot be done, in the hope that everyone believes it."
I glanced to the side, just a little, not enough to look into Her eyes but enough to see the the flat press of Her lips.
That same dread I felt when the Hero asked for his Boon welled up inside me, and all of a sudden, I thought I understood what that cost was.
"The life... Is taken back," I said. My breath was shaky. "From... From the new life it became."
The Goddess of Life gave one short, sharp nod, and something inside me crumbled.
---
The Hero is a good man who will never know the true price of his Boon. He defeated the evil, but he will not rest on his laurels while there are still people in the world in need of help.
His lover is his equal in this, a fine young lady with the stoutest of hearts, and they rejoice in their second chance at being together after she once sacrificed herself for him.
I have heard that they travel, and they offer aid wherever they can. More than one new ward of the Temple was sent here by the pair.
I wonder, sometimes, if it might not be just the same if it were only him out there in the world. If a young boy with rosy cheeks and a happy giggle was scampering around the town here instead.
Would the Hero have kept to his path without his lover beside him? Would he perhaps have been killed himself by some brigand on the road, or turned bitter at the loss? Would he have used her memory to inspire him never to stop trying?
Would my sister's son have grown into as good a man, or one who sowed new evils? Would he have been violent, or as gentle as a lamb? Would he perhaps have become the Hero's studious apprentice, the most dedicated of any thanks to the nod between two souls who once knew each other?
I wonder if the Hero's lover remembers anything from her year of being my sister's son. If she knows how much she is-was-is loved.
I wonder about these things that I will never get the answers to.
But I do not wonder often, not when I have to watch my young niece while my sister and her husband take a well-deserved day off.
I hardly find time for idle thoughts when the newest child through the doors of the Temple finds a sudden aptitude for fire magic.
I certainly don't have time to speculate on what-might-have-been when the Goddess takes me to the sacred garden and shows me how to plant the seeds of a plant that has not grown there for a hundred years or more.
I know more about the cycle of Life and Death than most, and more than I want. I know about how unfair things can be, about loss, about family, about how happenstance can help and hinder, and about how everything is connected to everything else.
No one can ever get things right all of the time, not even the gods. Sometimes the deepest love can shatter someone else's heart, and allowing ignorance is sometimes kinder than telling the truth, and sometimes the worst truths can heal you once you pluck them out of your skin and sit with them for a while.
Life will always go on, or it won't, and it will always be messy, and not even the gods can fix all of it. But you have to pick your heavy feet up, take each step as it comes, and maybe tomorrow will have fewer jagged edges.
You are served a full, freshly-prepared pie. However, something is off about this pie. Something wrong. Something is hidden or lurks within it. Something that Should Not Escape. Events will conspire against any attempt to eat the pie. Draw the pie and that which is inside it.
Humanity is the only intelligent species that can directly sense electromagnetic radiation. This means that humanity are the only ones who can see the stars without expensive scientific equipment.
electromagnetic radiation is actually the entirety of waveform energy. like from gamma rays to radiowaves (and waves even bigger than them) and everything in between including heat, light and sound.
so any sort of lifeform that can’t sense it? not really possible. you could make this work if you narrow it down a bit - maybe the aliens can’t ‘see’ visible light?
It is the end of days. God and Lucifer stand before the last human being. You are the first neutral soul who is neither good or evil enough to pass into a afterlife and thus must be judged personally. Unknown to them, you are Death and have come for them instead.
The figure in the long black cloak walked across the barren landscape. Everything was flat. There were no features left on Earth. The seas had long since boiled away, the atmosphere evaporated, and the furnace of iron that had once blazed in the centre of the planet had dimmed and gone out.
The figure’s cloak billowed as they moved, though not in any of the long-stilled winds that had once swept across the planet. It had never been completely corporeal, anyway. Perhaps it was swirling in the ghosts of the breeze. The figure would have laughed if the thought had not crossed their mind a million times before.
While the lack of landmarks might have caused any other being to stray from their path, this one did not. Any observers would have seen the clean, straight line that the figure was tracking across the remnants of a once-green world. However, there were no other beings around. There were no observers, not yet.
Still the figure walked.
The first rays of the harsh red sun peeked over the horizon, throwing everything into shades of blood. The figure did not stop to marvel. Not this time. Not any more. Not even for the last time they would ever see it here.
The red sun slid lazily over the sky. It would have been unbearably hot, but the figure did not care much for temperatures. They were irrelevant. The only thing that mattered was answering the call. The last call that would ever be answered here.
The figure stopped at last just as the red sun dipped back down over the other side of the world.
Here.
The figure waited.
To the left of the figure in the cloak, the ground began to bubble. Dark, goopy tar split the crust of ash, and a burst of flame recalling the chilled core of the Earth revealed the form of what most would have called a monster. Most were gone, now.
To the figure’s right, the air crackled, the first electricity on Earth since the clouds had gone away. A form of light, too bright to truly see, alighted upon the ground.
The figure noticed that both of them seemed rather confused.
“Who are you?” asked the form in light. “How is it that I do not know?”
“What do you want?” asked the monstrous form. “Why can’t I see?”
“I am who I am, and I want what I want,” said the figure. “I have but two tasks left.”
“Your time is over, can you not feel it?” asked the monstrous form. “Put your tasks to rest and face your death.”
“We are here to decide your fate,” said the form of light. “To judge the last soul that stands before us.”
“Look, then,” said the figure to the form of light. “You will see who I am.”
To the monstrous form the figure said: “You will see what I want.”
Both looked. Both drew away. The figure bowed their head.
“Indeed.”
The figure held out one or their hands, the cloak falling away from their arm and exposing their transparent flesh. White bones glowed beneath the glassy muscles, and with their other hand, they pushed back their hood. A skull leered through the clear skin, haloed by a wave of swirling, vitreous strands of hair. In their outstretched hand, the first grip coalesced. Snaking down, the snaith grew, long and slender. Their other hand came down just as the second grip protruded, and then dark pole stopped at a blunted end. The skeletal figure glowed, stronger now, and from the aether at the end of the pole came the silvery ring, the tang, the heel. The beard of the blade flared down, and then the blade stretched out to the side. The gentle curve of the chine, leading all the way to the toe of the blade, was sharp.
A scythe.
The figure held it low to the ground.
The forms to either side of the figure remained silent.
“I have filled your Kingdoms. I have seen every face that passed through gate or flame. Do you know who I am?”
“You are Death,” said the form of light. “The end of Eternity. I see no Good in you.”
“I have performed my tasks again and again, without fail. I have only two left to complete here. Do you know what I want?”
“You have come for Us,” said the monstrous form. “We are the Last of your harvest. I see no Evil in you.”
The blade flicked out. Once. Twice.
Two souls moved beyond.
“No,” said the figure. “Not the end of Eternity. Not yet.”
The moon had long since drifted away, so the only light falling upon the Earth was from the stars.
“I’m not done yet.”
The figure looked up, bones gleaming crystalline white. Flesh bleached of all colour by a thousand thousand thousand lifetimes all at once.
In life, you always have one dream that you cannot forget. It always stays with you . And it’s either good, bad or makes you wonder “what in the world made my brain dream that, I am concerned”. Draw that one weird dream in a four panel comic.
The word ‘pigeon’ comes from the word ‘pijon’ in Old French, which was in turn from the Latin pipionem. So you’re using the soft g (like giraffe/mirage/etc) which sounds like j, rather than the hard g (gift/egg/etc).
Basically the English language is a mess and pronouncing things is a shot in the dark.
You are a scientist who has developed a way to manually edit DNA, and you’re preparing to demonstrate it by inserting a string of text into your own genome. While searching through the non-coding sections for a good spot to place the text, you notice something odd, already there: a message
“You’ve been beaten to the punch by several years, man, we already know how to do this. But working on a full-grown person? That’s not how genetic modification works, ya moron, unless you plan to change the DNA of every one of your body’s cells individually. Or clone yourself, but I don’t think we need more than one of you.
“I mean you could program a retrovirus to go in and edit each cell’s nucleus but their effects are limited in range and will wear off when the edited cells die unless you keep reapplying it. Why’d you think we haven’t fixed things like cystic fibrosis yet? Not for lack of trying. Anyway congrats for deciphering this, it can’t have been easy to realise that the AT and CG pairs were using Morse Code. Unless someone happened to point it out for you before they left the lab, eh?
“As for how this message got here, let’s just say your assistant might have pulled up your genome file and messed around because frankly, sir, you’re an idiot. Your actual DNA wouldn’t be as eloquent. I quit.”
If aliens landed on earth, how likely would it be that they take over the planet after finding out that their technology is far more advanced than ours?
(I found this here on Quora and thought it might inspire some of you to write!)
Pretty close to zero.
What exactly would our planet offer a species capable of interstellar travel? There are two schools of thought:
The Kardeshev scale
The Barrow scale
The Kardeshev scale measures civilizations by how much energy they can harness:
A Class I civilization harnesses all of the energy of their home planet
A Class II civilization harnesses all of the energy of their local star
A Class III civilization harnesses all of the energy of their local galaxy
Also…is it me or should there be a few steps between II and III?
The energy requirements of interstellar travel would probably require something close to a Class II civilization. So what would our planet offer a species capable of harnessing the energy of entire stars? Seems much more likely that they would come after our sun, and not even notice the little motes on planet 3 that depend on it.
The Barrow scale measures civilizations on their ability to manipulate small entities:
B1 manipulates visible objects
B2 manipulates genes
B3 = molecules
B4 = atoms
B5 = nuclei
B6 = sub-atomic particles
B7 manipulates the space-time structure of the universe
The Barrow scale implies that more advanced civilizations would explore inward rather than outward. They would likely end up as digitized entities, and they would likely spend most of their time as close to a black hole as possible. Black holes offer the best possible computing environment, the most energy density, and can likely be harnessed to produce more energy than stars.
So what exactly would our planet, or even our sun, offer to a species that thrives near black holes?
Personally, I’m a much bigger believer in the Barrow scale than the Kardeshev scale. Kardeshev is based on the mindset of the industrial age, where moar energy and moar territory = moar awesome. The Barrow scale is based on the digital age and seems to capture our current trajectory more accurately.
Advanced races seem more likely to be digital intelligences in a dyson sphere or at the edge of a singularity rather than remaining squishy bags of meat cruising the galaxy in giant hunks of metal looking for planets to conquer.
Every planet in our solar system has a “champion” being that takes on the attributes of the planet itself. The “champion” from the sun has created an army to destroy the planets and the 8 (or 9) champions must save the solar system.
Things seem to be going badly agains the forces of the Sun, until the Eight Planets seek help from the Dwarf Planets. Ceres, Pluto, Eris, Haumea and Makemake.
