The Arched World (Worlds of Creators Book 3) Read online

  Nothing in the room contributed to aWa’s sense of wonder, so she repeated the same process on the door next to that, finding an environment much alike the other one. If humans in that world had a definition for boredom, aWa would be the first one to coin it. Thus, she got back to the red door and descended the stairs until the end.

  Leaving it, she found a broad environment, still smashed by a ceiling, although larger in every direction. The big room had walls made of a material that seemed solid and at the same time allowed people to see through it, making her understand the notion of outside.

  She hit her head on the transparent material, blocked by its mysterious resistance. The ou.uo coordinated a strike with aWa's attack, failing to make it budge, helpless and scared. She walked to the side and the wall opened to her, boring a hole in itself automatically. Up in the sky, the col.loc from where she came began its slow ascent away from close contact.

  More than going outside, aWa stepped back on rich land. Hurtling through the ground, her ou.uo met dormant ous, dust and all kinds of noise, an entire ecosystem in slumber, much alike their original col.loc. They rejoiced by throwing dust over aWa, dust that became blue liquid and dripped on her body, spreading a trail of colored ink on the hard floor on which she stepped. She would meet other humans in her wandering, she sure would, and she would join them, and the ou.uo would regain access to the depths of awareness only honey could offer them.

  The land she walked on was the definition of an accident. Square hills rose at even intervals, towers that disrupted the horizon, hiding whatever lay beyond. AWa’s eyes served the sole purpose of finding other humans, and, unable to see from a distance, she trusted on luck alone to find others.

  The dark ground had a continuous double line dividing it in half, and each half had traced lines dividing them once more. To the flat ground's sides, towers rose high, and before them, tiny plateaus formed higher steps leading to the big tower walls. Strange things sprouted from those plateaus, brown and wrinkled things, cylindrical in half and half-spherical at the top, its shape made from tiny leaves.

  Above aWa, colored lights shone before crossings, in places where the valley opened in new paths to follow. More lights illuminated her road, at such a constant rate that she considered them the real night sun.

  No matter how far she went down the valley, square mounds surrounded her, too tall to allow a perfect view of the horizon. The mounds' size diminished along the way, they gained triangular toppings, still evenly spaced and blocky in shape.

  Colors never seen, complex drawings, figures of unknown constituency, artifacts of unknown origin sprouted around her. She received them with the indifference of eyes that looked for no such things. Doors, the thing she had learned to enjoy, existed everywhere, but they led to places lacking the sky, and she wouldn’t change the wide expanses of the world for any tight space.

  Shining bright ahead, more than anything else she’d seen so far on that land, a square mound rose above the others with splendor. It attracted aWa, her attention drawn not to light, but to a few silhouettes, the only sight capable of turning her into a lured insect.

  A group of humans stood side-by-side, not holding hands, not walking, not looking away. They stared straight at aWa, leaned on the wall, different than any human in aWa's col.loc. Colors stuck on their bodies, sharp edges cutting through their limbs, fixed in place, not flowing down, not made of dust.

  She walked past them, as the ritual demanded, giving her ou.uo enough time to see through the honey and try to make sense of that puzzle. Those humans, they didn’t have an ou.uo! At the same time, they wore stuff that only advanced ou.uo could ever hope to design on them, clothes to carry honey, clothes made of honey.

  AWa turned around, heading toward the group that simply waited for her, looking at her face, not turning their backs... Not turning their backs... She stopped in front of them, piercing through the eyes of the tall man at the end of the row, unable to detect anything out of place, so unused was she to using her eyes for living in the world. Confronted with such an unfamiliar human being, she did what, in the end, represented her final goal: she held his hand.

  Instead of fingers, however, she met a wall. The person had no depth, it didn't exist in the same realm that she inhabited. Those eyes, they sure stared at her, then it became clear that they didn't aim at her.

  Those people refused her integration, not turning their backs to her, locking their hands away from hers. The ou.uo stopped spinning for a second, shocked by the absence of a correspondent ou.uo. A group of people without an ou.uo?

  Thus rejected, aWa walked alone. She, the daughter of infinity, she wandered on worlds ravaged by immortal creatures trapped underground, punching the upper world to try to escape, birthing their children to give the surface a taste of their power. Humans held the energy to power everything, they were the reason the col.locs spun and met each other.

  After finding a flat place in which aWa sunk and walked inside a strange material that made her hair float and her walk slow down, she got back to a valley between square mounds. Her ou.uo lost all dust and a part of the honey in that liquid material, rushing to recompose itself before anything bad happened to her. She resumed her wandering meditation through the empty land as she learned to do since birth.

  “That won’t work, that sure won’t... The mountain is receding a bit now, you see? Look up there, it’s going down. But it got too close, it’s going to disrupt anything we put in orbit,” Colin said, lending Dalana a small telescope.

  “Right. So what, can’t you think of any other solution?” Dalana said, bending over to look at the lens. “For starters, you’re not creating a round planet, you know that, so it’s not like you don’t have to make concessions.”

  “Precisely for this reason I want to make things as similar as possible. It’s different enough already. If we can’t put satellites in orbit, we’ll have to do with antennas and airplanes.” H shook his head with hands on his waist.

  “Or you give them telepathy.” She lifted one eye brow through the telescope.

  “What? No, that would be awkward. People don’t need to know what’s going on inside everyone’s mind.”

  “Wrong. I had a world with telepathy once, and it went pretty well.” Dalana rose her head to face Colin with a proud smile.

  “For your standards, I guess.” Colin rolled his eyes.

  “Yes, but I’m sure you’d like to be there as well. You’re just new at this stuff, you’ve got lots to see.” Dalana put her hands in her front pocket, bouncing up and down with her knees.

  “Yeah, alright. That doesn’t mean I’ll end up a Utopian like you in the end. For all I know, you’re alone in there.”

  “Fine. Can’t I have hopes, though? I see it in your eyes. You don’t really want Terra, you just want a better life. We’re very much alike.”

  “There you go again, making assumptions. Aren’t you human like me? You can’t read minds.”

  “I can read faces. Understanding, you know?” Dalana looked straight into Colin's eyes, who scratched his shaved head with the tips of his fingers.

  “Oh, I do know, except that you’re not even from my world, you don’t even walk the way I do, and you want to lecture me on my goals. I want Terra back, ok? It’s wrong to kill a world that has so much to give.” He pulled one of Dalana's rebel hair curls, still impressed with her new hairstyle since the new world's beginning.

  “I agree! However, why not recreate it with less suffering? You can do this, you know, it’s just a matter of wishing. You can even come up with other rules of entropy and all that.”

  “It won’t be the same.”

  “Well, it won’t be the same here either, and there you are, creating a new Terra in one of Ai.iA’s col.locs.” Dalana spun herself in front of him.

  “She gave it to me to do as I please, you were there too. I know it won’t be the same. I’m doing this to show Mae that I want to meet her, that’s all. I have to make some noise, otherwise I�
��ll never find her.”

  “You can make noise with a better Terra. Give them telepathy! Give them free food! Make them unable to hate, anything different.”

  “Hey, you have a col.loc of your own too, ok? Why don’t you create something for yourself there, then we compare worlds? I have a right to do as I please. I am a Creator too, am I not?” Colin bent over at the telescope.

  “Of course. And I want to stay with you, I don’t want a place of my own. Are you so scared that you don’t even allow for some negotiation?”

  “Scared? Me? Of you?”

  “Of the idea of a better world, yes.” Dalana swayed her spine from side to side. “It makes you lose your mind, doesn’t it?”

  “Not at all. If there’s something I’m scared about, it is to have a boring world, and Terra wasn’t boring, oh no, it was the opposite of boring.” Colin shook his head with vehemence behind the lens.

  “For your standards...”

  “Well, no! OOOO liked it too.”

  “It destroyed your world, do I have to remind you of that? Terra was boring, just face it. How exciting was the life of a bus driver, oh, wow, and that of a cashier, and security people, and secretaries, and everybody who had to do repetitive stuff all day, which was what, let me see, ninety-seven percent of people leading monotonous lives in most of their time. I think you have no idea of what an exciting world is all about.”

  “Terra was not a Utopia, we had to work to survive, ok? Nothing came for free.”

  “So, make it come for free now. Then it won't be so boring. You must see it, you have the chance to do that now.” Dalana shadowed him with the darkness of her complexion.

  Colin took a deep breath out of habit, tired of arguing. How could it be so hard for her to understand that things didn’t have to be perfect to be enjoyable? He formulated a conciliatory answer, he was about to say it, but he looked beyond Dalana, in front of him, and widened his eyes.

  She noticed the change in his expression and turned around. Under the avenue’s lampposts, aWa walked with her ou.uo. Dalana smiled, excited to meet one of Ai.iA’s creations in Colin’s land. Colin, on the other hand, feared the mess it could bring to his col.loc.

  ∙ 5 ∙ Curious humans

  Colin had a bad feeling about aWa’s apparition. He had Terra's plans in his mind, he prepared his world for a glorious come back. He filled most of the col.loc with random cities and nature, not knowing enough of it to recreate everything in perfect detail. His hometown mattered the most, its essence lived on in his heart and it came into existence in identical shape.

  Colin used the same standards to forge old international relationships, compensating a few aspects here and there, making things look the same and alive under the old world's concepts. Human structures permeated the land, houses, buildings, parks, subways, ports, and airports, but nobody lived in it. He wanted to tweak the infrastructure until it formed a coherent picture, taking care of all problems before show time.

  “She seems lost in your creation. Do you think she likes it?” Dalana said, approaching aWa.

  “Can you read anything from her face? She is showing nothing. We should get her out of here, put her back to where she came from,” Colin said, following her.

  “And disrespect her will? If she went through the trouble of coming here, it must mean something.”

  “It means she’s lost. This woman, and those things flying around her, don’t belong here. She’s naked, walking like a robot, doesn’t even react to what we’re saying. Hey, you, what’s your name? What are you doing here?” he said loudly, waving his hands in front of aWa.

  “Creations can’t see or hear Creators in this world, remember? That’s how Ai.iA wanted it here, she made the rules.”

  “Ah, right, yeah. That doesn’t change the fact that we must find a way of taking her out of New Terra. What do you suggest?”

  “I suggest that we let her be. If your world is such a good one, I’m sure there’s space for people like her.” Dalana raised a malicious brow.

  She crouched by aWa’s side to take a better look at the orbiting dust and small things that followed her. The misty trail reflected on Dalana's pupils, it crossed through her body in clouds of pink and blue.

  “It's time we admit that Ai.iA overcame our expectations. Don't you agree?” She entered an orbit around aWa along her ou.uo.

  “For all I'm concerned, I'm just glad she made a world suited for humans.” Colin distanced himself from aWa and her new moon.

  “Did you expect her to be sweet and open-minded like this?”

  “What's sweet about it?” Colin squinted at her.

  “Can't you see it? She's honoring us with her world. First by putting humans in it, and by letting them walk with all needs fulfilled. She remembers me, after all.” Dalana spun on herself with her ghost arms penetrating aWa.

  “Well, it's the least she can do, right? I mean, after all you've done for her.”

  Dalana beamed with delight at her dance around aWa, watching the ous pass by her side and inside her. She pursed her lips, staring at Colin, and relaxed.

  “Tell me, have you ever thought about people like this?” Dalana moved on in her orbits around aWa, who walked on the road with frozen eyes.

  “It’s just a naked woman with a weird crown and a tiny solar system. No, I never thought of that, and I don’t see the point of having such an idea.”

  “See, that’s the challenge, to come up with innovative ideas, even though in the end we all want worlds following a similar tendency. There are so many ways of crafting places for humans—”

  “And Terra is one of them. Will you help me or not, huh? It’s all nice and fine to meet this person, but she’s got her home, and I’ve got mine. Infinite col.locs for her to wander around, and she comes to mine?”

  “I bet people from your world will treat her well. Let her stay, please.” Dalana smirked at Colin's plea, her eyes clenched in expectation.

  “I wish I could. The problem is that they won’t treat her nicely, not in here, in the city, at least.” Colin shook his head, crossing his arms, fast steps leading him closer to his friend.

  “Make them treat her nicely, then. It’s up to you to decide what they’ll do.” Dalana spun out of the ou.uo, taking Colin's arms.

  Colin rolled his eyes, stepping ahead of Dalana. He put himself in front of aWa and raised both hands toward her. She walked through him without blinking, following the avenue as if crossing a valley.

  “Well, I’ll try to teleport her, if that’s the way.” He scratched his forehead.

  “Yes? Was it something you did often on Terra?” Dalana said by his ear, pressing her shoulders behind his back.

  “Hm, of course not. It's something others at least thought about, so I can’t think of anything else. Won’t you help me?”

  “I’m helping you already.” Dalana hopped in front of him, turning around to face his worried stance. “You should let her stay, and learn from it.”

  “She might get hurt, and we both would hate that.” Colin nibbled his lower lip.

  “Then make it so that she won’t get hurt in your world.”

  “You’re a tough one, aren’t you? You don’t give up.” He rolled his eyes up with a funny snarl.

  “Only because I like you a lot.” She caressed Colin’s shoulder with spidery fingers, swinging her spine left and right.

  At that point, the avenue made a tight curve, coming down a steep hill. Awa decided to continue straight, instead of changing her path to follow the road, passing under the trees on the sidewalk. Her ou.uo blew in explosions of dust, throwing it all over her, making her drip with blue.

  Dalana ran ahead of her, thinking of stairs to help her walk downhill. Her mind process took too long to materialize her thoughts, though, as aWa tripped and fell, rolling down with arms and legs bouncing loose. Out of fright, Colin created a big pile of wool in her path, stopping her fall.

  AWa stood with a shaking leg, balancing her weight on one side, l
eaving the messy pile with a twitching arm. Limping, she walked into a dust cloud, swallowed whole. Her ou.uo blew more over her body until she recovered her natural grace, healed in a matter of seconds.

  Despite her scare, she insisted on walking down the slope on which she tripped. Her fall gave Dalana enough time to prepare a large set of stairs guiding her to the avenue below.

  “Did you see that? She’s safe with those little things!” Dalana said to Colin, water flowing in her pupils, lampposts shining in the mirrors of her eyes.

  “Yes, I guess. Ai.iA really liked you, right? Or maybe I didn’t know her well enough, for her to create people like this. That means you don’t have to fear her getting hurt in your col.loc. She’ll be fine, let her be here.”

  “Can I at least put her in a region of her own? That will be better for both parties.” Colin spread his arms wide by his sides.

  “You want to lock her somewhere? Ah, I see, this was how you solved problems in your world.” Dalana swung her head from left to right, her mouth locked in a twisted line.

  “No, it’s not that. What I mean is that... Well, I’ve been thinking. If she came here, others like her could do the same. And if I can’t stop them, then it’s better to lead them somewhere safe,” Colin said, creating a wall in front of aWa.

  The naked woman circled the obstacle and walked on, leaving the hill to enter a narrow street. That became a corridor suddenly, bulky concrete walls sprouting by her side. Colin created a maze on the city's streets, a clear path traced to lead her away from it.

  “You know we can test a few things to find out whether she’s at risk, without having to populate this whole place?” Dalana placed her hands on her waist.

  “We do?” Colin said, his eyes bewildered at what she had said.

  “Yes, here, I’ll take her someplace else, ok?” She waved her fingers in the air, stepping in front of him.