The Arched World Read online

  Their concern found its justification on the risky grounds in aWa's path. The plains beneath her feet, for the past thousands of strides, slowly rose, pushed by the col.loc's fury. It punched the surface to try to make it break.

  She got closer to the sky, being on the center of the elevated plains, which came up in a squarish shape, round edges separating it from the lower lands. Her ou.uo orbited her with excitement, spreading more dust in their disc, the feathers moving closer to the rings, ready to take care of their aWa in the case of an accident. And an accident was due, given her unending walk and the incoming border ahead.

  She fell down a gorge. The entire ecosystem of her human existence slid on the smooth walls of a huge opening in the raised plateau, throwing all the dust at their disposal on the soft body energizing their orbits. Acting thus, the ou.uo hoped to conceal her in a cloud of healing, protecting her from major damage.

  AWa banged her head on her tumble, she cracked her femur after a fall, she injured her spine after another big one, rolling down with loose arms and legs that bruised, and squished muscles. The dust liquefied all over her, keeping her well, while the ou.uo troubled itself with the barriers to their orbit around aWa, penetrating the wall and nearly losing ous as they struggled to get back to her.

  When she reached the ground, unable to get up, although still alive, the ou.uo lacked dust. Their group spun intact, to their relief. Stabilized on the ground, noticing the center of their world having difficulty resuming her walk, they worked to get the dust flowing.

  Pebbles crossed the rings, hitting feathers here and there, exploding in bursts of powder. Soon, aWa got ready to get back on her journey, placing a firm step on the slimy rubber under her soles, reinvigorated in full.

  The land breathed, alive, and the naked eye followed its constant transformation with vertigo. Wandering in the valley between two big walls, aWa became dizzy when the horizon disappeared from her gaze, losing balance, and stopping for a second to wait for the changes.

  High lands surrounded her, getting lower by the minute, leveling down not with the rest of the plains, but falling underground, creating large creases by her sides. The result left aWa standing on an elevated path, the bottom of a steep valley turned into the highest point in a region of depressed landscape.

  To walk in such a tight space put her at risk, having just recovered from an immense fall from the former highlands. The ou.uo spun in haste to spread dust and recompose their disc's glory, preparing for the worst once more. AWa could easily step toward the chasm, and they wouldn’t have enough dust to keep her intact along the way.

  She swung uncertainly on the tiny space available to her thick legs, walking closer to the edge. A ring ou attempted a close contact with her skin, hitting her face after a tight orbital maneuver. She didn’t blink. In unison, a few pebbles synchronized their movement and did the same, turning aWa slightly to the side, making her change course and keep going in the safe direction.

  In safety, she left the high paths with a beautiful ou.uo disc filled with dust. At a distance, over a rugged terrain, the ground bubbled. Tiny creatures awoke from deep slumber, crossing solid matter toward the air, where a new power plant walked the land. An ou.uo began its formation, energized, spinning in their first orbits around a man called uiTiu, who walked in aWa's direction.

  Life in the col.loc existed underground. Diversity stayed a potential hidden from human eyes unless they crossed paths with large ou.uos. And ou.uos didn’t exist on their own. They needed people, around whom they formed their tiny galaxies. A new human in the horizon was thus a major sight, one capable of attracting aWa’s attention, offering a precise direction to her path.

  The more she approached the walking silhouette, the more his shape sharpened under her gaze. UiTiu's limbs trembled with fat, his brown skin shone with the bluish slime of birth, a short man, long hair, straight and black. His belly hung from his torso like a ball, smooth and naked. Humans born from the core’s monster had no bellybutton, creatures of the mountain. That man, uiTiu, wore necklaces longer than aWa’s, hanging from his neck, the lower end circling the bottom of his swollen abdomen.

  He walked clean, devoid of the dust mist surrounding aWa. Around him, though, his ou.uo made experiments among its limbs, failed ones at that. A quiet ecosystem, it lacked complementary ous to get things done. Unwilling to sacrifice friends to encompass other kinds, they orbited in ineptitude, glad enough to be above ground. Such was the fate of creatures in the world, and such was the excitement of meeting new people.

  The man walked to exist, in the same philosophical mission that guided aWa. They meditated in unison, hence recognizing their power to change life. She approached uiTiu by keeping the straight line traced by her steps, watching him come her way, more details were revealed at every subsequent stride.

  Like her, he had no fur besides the hair on his head, his pupils searched the horizon in a fixed stare, coated by the black depth of a night sky. In her calm, determined pace, she looked straight ahead when he passed by her side. He did the same, pretending that nothing different happened in the past seconds, moving on toward the infinity of his walk.

  Her ou.uo suffered at the missed contact. A celestial body zipped past their sphere of influence, a mere taste of another ecosystem penetrated their dusty disc. They got a glimpse of uiTiu’s ou.uo, finding milkers and handlers, new ous that could bring new possibilities to their group. With new combinations, what if they managed to produce even more valuable things to help their health? What if they could find a way of keeping aWa always safe?

  UiTiu went away, a force of nature indifferent to ou.uo's and their minds, a mountain, a valley, breeding frustration in the ou.uo's core. Humans moved beyond their will, one step after the other, powering ous, meaning the world to them. Gods, givers, the most beautiful part in the universe, aWa and uiTiu increased their distance.

  He got further away, giving every possible sign of an eternal separation. But then aWa turned around, aiming at uiTiu, her head locked in place all the time. One quick glance and nothing else, eyes free to face the horizon, disregarding his whereabouts, engaged in ritual, and simply following its steps.

  Now, instead of distancing herself from him, she got closer and closer, attracted to his flabby dorsal skin folds bending one on top of the other. Her ou.uo produced dust and threw it over her, coloring her blue, regenerating her every cell, embellishing her to make sure that she reached him at the peak of her beauty.

  AWa placed one hand gently on his back. Still walking, they moved slowly, two spaceships docking, matching speed to unite in safety. They found a comfortable pace, marching left feet first, right ones later, an army of two, joined by the touch of fingers on rugged skin.

  Eyes, so important in the clear majority of human worlds, settled for inactivity, made useless by the ritual in charge of their union. AWa, the one with the initiative, made a circle around uiTiu, dragging her hand on his body, feeling his thick arms, his protruding belly, his chubby torso.

  Orbiting thus, she joined his ou.uo, becoming the biggest body in his ecosystem. One turn and she signaled her will, then waiting for him to do the same. He inserted himself in the richness of her dust disc, dragging his finger tips on her torso while he completed one full lap around her.

  AWa joined hands with uiTiu, synchronizing her steps to match his, both changing to a direction neither of them followed earlier. Together now, they formed a small village, a tiny settlement who would wander at random in the world, absorbed in quiet meditation.

  Their ou.ous saw the powers above them negotiate their fates, excited to get so near others of their kind. At the ritual’s end, the energy flowing from two humans gave them enough to blend both ou.uos, making one ou.uo double its former size, filled with new possibilities.

  Endowed with new ous, the ecosystem resumed its endless process of exploration, testing new possibilities. They had the dust that created a beautiful disc and which healed aWa, so far, the ones coming from uiTiu fo
und no purpose. In the first contact with dust, however, the milkers swelled up, its former sharp spikes becoming round tits, its elongated body turning into a bell-like shape. It produced honey out of the dust, and the honey’s power electrified the ou.uo. The substance's mere presence caused ripples through the ous' orbits, the greatness of its potential striking at their mind with the immensity of an ultimate power.

  The honey flowed down until it hit the ground, spreading itself along the milkers' centrifugal force. It became wasted dust, solidified into the source of absolute wealth, and thrown away due to their lack of storage capacity.

  Honey was synthesized knowledge, a direct access to the dimension of time. Past, present, future, all accessible through it, a portal of eternity opened to the ou.uo bearing its viscous wealth. The more honey available, the bigger the window through time, the wiser they got, the more they could do with the ous in their group.

  Tiny drops of this ultimate substance fell on handlers hurtling through their orbits, offering them glimpses of genius. Honey was the hard drive of the cosmos, and a building block. A clear lesson, one to put into practice at once.

  A handler ou could carry honey by using its body ramps, it could read through the universe’s codex and transform that malleable liquid into stretchy things. The handlers landed on aWa’s back, attached blobs of a green elastic on her skin, went back to the spiral disc of dust to collect more honey, and brought it down to her body after changing honey’s constituency. They built an apparatus capable of holding itself in place, a backpack created on aWa's flesh.

  Pebbles crossed the rings, hitting the feathers, which produced dust. Milkers absorbed dust, turning it to honey, used by the handlers, carried by feathers and pebbles to the backpack. The more of it that they got, the wiser they became.

  The ou.uo reached their first infancy, looking for the first time through the edge of time, to the unending cycles of their glories in that world. The beautiful picture presented inside their mind painted too large a scene for their limited perceptions, though. The complexities of their existence needed more honey to make sense. Soon, they dreamed, they’d have enough to share their place among the ou.uos of all times and places, existing simultaneously with every formation of their kind.

  Humans, the cosmos showed them, behaved outside their realm, a force of nature. Let them be, and make the universe your own, the cosmos said. That tiny glimpse, from the little honey the ou.uo had collected thus far, expanded their orbits. Some ous went so far from the couple of humans at their center that they saw more of the ground than of anything else. And the ground, it became obvious, held the secrets to another kind of expansion.

  A handler ou inclined its orbital plan to dive into the viscous ground. It suffered no collision, greeted by the col.loc’s surface with the embrace of a motherly membrane. It had free reign in the domain of matter, unlike the humans, and beneath it, it found slumbering ous, dead ideas, tools, and a frightening hidden landscape of possibilities which it could anticipate but not predict. The handler got an immaterial ring of ornate sticks, spinning on themselves in a beautiful pattern.

  Colliding with the dust, the sticks produced sparks. Dust changed color, to pink, to green, to jullisco, to hinota, to colors unique to ou.uo’s perceptions of space. The pebbles, also inspired by the honey, dove into the smooth ground under aWa’s feet and returned to orbit coated with oil.

  When hurtling through a ring, the oil turned into sound, an exploding laugh to which uiTiu and aWa stayed indifferent. Nothing of the ou.uo’s world concerned them, in total opposition to their ecosystem’s existence. The more they made honey, the more certain they grew of the humans’ significant role in their future and past.

  Making noises, with colorful sparks, surrounded by a misty disc and tiny comets spinning around, the small village advanced through the land, a force of nature mounted by tiny fortunetellers of eternity.

  ∙ 3 ∙ Clouds in the sky

  For aWa and uiTiu, beauty lay in a pair of holding hands. All the rest, the mere scenery of life, passed by their eyes with uniform potential, making small difference whether to walk to this or that place.

  Little did they notice, then, when the land they walked on lost its elastic membrane. They entered a swamp, black in color, small mounds until the edge of the horizon. Their ou.uo inclined their orbits to scavenge the new ground in search of new things, excited with the novel terrain.

  In the swamp, aWa and uiTiu walked not on water, not on mud either. Their steps penetrated the ground, activating a series of spikes that grew to circle each foot. Those protruding shapes, in their turn, generated a field that sustained bones and skin without touching it.

  AWa and uiTiu floated, thus, never feeling the land, and yet feeding themselves by the field, walking with trouble because of constant slipping. Had they been humans like the ones from old Terra, they would laugh and run, come up with ideas for sport or even fear the swamp. Being children of the col.loc, however, they walked and smiled.

  Mounds sprouted and mountains formed in a few minutes, the col.loc's rage subjecting the swamp to the same treatment it devoted to its entire skin. It started at a good distance from the wandering couple, a huge spike, pushing out from the land.

  Pushed from the core, the lower ground layer activated the swamp slime, acting as the field’s trigger. It swelled around the tall shape rising toward the sky, making for a fatter peak than usual.

  Soon, many others followed the growth of the first peak, forming a wall on the col.loc. On the opposite way, the same process took place, morphing mounds into mountains. The core’s monster showed its rage and struggled against its boundaries.

  A maze in formation, the region became a trap to aWa and uiTiu. Their ou.uo increased their dust density, making a dust ring so thick as to get in the way of sight. Honey filled aWa’s backpack, while handlers built another container on uiTiu’s back. They saw through the knowledge of infinity and got ready for the trouble ahead.

  A small crease grew between the humans, a thick line rising under their held hands, something gentle at first, inspiring no fear. It reached their height, pushing their arms upward as the crease became a mound, separating each to opposite sides. With their feet floating on the ground field, aWa and uiTiu slipped down, tripping, and falling on the black swamp.

  Spikes circled their bodies, and they floated, keeping themselves together by their hands’ might. As the mound became a mountain, the col.loc’s gravity did its best to separate both. When fingers couldn’t hold any longer, they slid down the slope, torn apart from each other, a wall in their middle, getting taller by the minute.

  The ou.uo split in half, one part staying with aWa, another with uiTiu on the other side. The milkers all stayed in aWa’s orbit, meaning that the others lacked a honey making capacity. For the first time since birth, aWa stopped walking. She stared at the mountain in front of her, expecting to find uiTiu behind the slime. Despair bent her mouth, removing the smile for a serious expression, her face knowing sadness for the first time.

  Crying for action, the one handler staying in aWa’s ou.uo dove into the honey backpack and spread a small amount of it on her skin, the solid butter of infinite knowledge. It dripped on her body, slowly flowing down her buttocks and thighs.

  It had an effect, yes, the ou.uo could see it from the future. AWa turned her head away from the wall, walking through the maze with urgent strides, her body swinging fast on the dark ground, strong legs keeping her afloat on the slippery membrane.

  She went far, reaching the line of new rising mounds, climbing one of them after a high jump, and slipping to the other side. Once there, she traced the opposite path, returning to where uiTiu should still be, lest he decided to keep walking without her.

  AWa got taller as she walked. The land beneath her rose to make the valley between two mountain ranges, small holes perforating the raised gap. She found uiTiu in one such hole, a man stepping on the walls without hope of getting out. Sure of what to do, she slid down t
o meet him again, not one second lost in hesitancy.

  They joined hands, their ou.uo regathered and emitted laughing sounds to celebrate their unison. Locked in a hole, they couldn’t leave, but to walkers it meant little if only they could move their legs. Geography would set them free at the right time.

  Soon, the col.loc’s monster elevated their pit to new plateau's level, releasing them to the world over which they could walk. From high up the swamp, aWa and uiTiu saw slender, synchronized shapes moving in the horizon. Humans, like them, in greater number than they’d ever seen.

  Humans, the walking statues of the world, attracted others because they were mirrors. In a world devoid of reflective surfaces, lacking animals and where the dormant underground ecosystem of ous meant nothing for the core’s monster, looking at their equals reassured the humans of existence. Born of the col.loc, they followed no destination other than that of awareness.

  The group aWa and uiTiu found at the swamp’s edge stood still, staring at the approaching couple. AWa floated on the black ground, balancing herself with the help of uiTiu’s grasp, who also slipped often and needed the support of her flabby body.

  Stacked honey decorated both their backs, accumulated in bags. To seek the meaning of those distant humans who refrained from walking just to wait for aWa and uiTiu, their ou.uo piled up more honey on aWa’s shoulders, adorning her with infinity.

  Five people held hands, two like aWa, two like uiTiu, one with black skin and hair evaporating in a flow of endless dust. They stood at the center of an oval galaxy surrounding them, a majestic mist, colorful and active, blinking ous spinning nonstop.

  Powered by five humans, the ou.uo foresaw the newcomers, filled with honey, wise enough to prepare their dust for the new milkers, handlers, feathers, rings, and pebbles, all ready to join their ecosystem.

  Following the ritual, aWa and uiTiu walked past the waiting ones, their backs turned to the others, leaving them behind. Their small ou.uo got near the big galaxy, exchanging gentle dust blows as a sign of excitement. The couple then took a U-turn and stepped toward the group.