Jigsaw World (37 page)

The reason for this was obvious. Tom still
carried the Stone of Reality, and Karla still had the Seed of
Creation. No normal worldline would stay in balance with two such
powerful artifacts permanently in residence in them. This would not
matter if they made a pocket universe, split from the normal
worldlines of Man.

Such a pocket universe still would gain in
‘substantiality’, just as would a normal worldline in such a
situation, but the pocket could be defined any way the creator
wanted. As time went on, it would simply become more of what the
creator wanted it to be, so no harm done.

The day came, and Tom and Karla stood in front
of one of the Seer’s open doors, looking into a place of pure
change mists. As the Sorcerer watched, they concentrated on the
refuge of their dreams, and soon a place of waterfalls and rivers
formed, and then they painted in the sky with three moons and
pterodactyls gliding through the blue green sky.

Now it was time to paint in their Sanctum with
their thoughts. Lofty towers of stone towered above medieval
battlements, and vast areas of rooms and courts and gardens and
labyrinths abounded. The Sorcerer had told them the secrets to
creating and banishing Tulpa forms, so they would supply their
minion needs with Tulpas.

At last the world was formed, and stable, and
with a final farewell to the Seer, they stepped through the mirror
to their new home. The Sorcerer came with them, to spend a few days
helping them to settle in.

******

Somewhere, there are six waterfalls that are
fed by a massive river. The water falls a thousand feet into a
mutual pool which feeds into the sea. In the distance, the ocean
awaits the bounty of waters. Everywhere, there are great Oaks and
other hardwood trees, down almost to the shore of the great ocean,
for the water is more brackish than salty, and the creatures that
swim the ocean are of both salt and fresh water kinds.

Overlooking the waterfalls, and the ocean, and
nestled amidst the trees stands a sprawling building, a virtual
walled city, with towers and endless halls and longhouses. The
gates are open, for there are no enemies on this world, and none
that would be so foolish as to raid this place exist in all the
worlds.

Upon the streets of the city are many who
hurry on urgent missions, but none of these truly live in the
traditional sense. They are the manifested thoughts of their
Creators, Tulpas of a remarkable quality. These are material, and
they have their own names, and some of them think their own strange
thoughts.

Great cats and canines, and animals of all
sorts walk among the Tulpa people. They are not restrained, for in
all of the world, there are but two who live, and the animals were
created by them not to cross the desires of the Creators. None
exists whom can define the Creators. At one time they were human.
Before that time, it would be hard to define them, and now, they
have become more.

Karla and Tom had made this world some years
ago. They thought of themselves as humans with an unknown past and
a great and dangerous power. It took some time to learn what they
really were. They had no memories of anything more than twenty
years in the past. What they didn’t know at the time was
why
.

The memories that they could not recall were
not too weak to remember. They were far too vast. Memories not of
one lifetime, but of millions. Millions of Tom and millions of
Karla, stretching back over millennia, those were the memories that
they had lost. A thousand mortal minds could not have contained
those memories, but they have become more than mortal.

Men can develop strange new powers, they might
command the powers of telepathy, or telekinesis, or precognition.
They may learn to Shadow Walk, or alter the fabric of Reality
around them in other ways. These might be seen by others as more
than human, but they are not gods.

To be a god is to wear the face of one of the
primal forces. If one wears the face that those who see knows is
the face of Life, or of Death, or of Spring, or of Harvest, or
perhaps the face of Murder, then one wears one of those faces, what
the philosophers call an Aspect. To be a god, one must wear the
Aspect of a god.

In the Hindu faith, there was one who had
three Aspects, those of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva. These are the god
faces of the Creator, the Preserver, and the destroyer of the
Worlds. Together they were the Hindu Trinity known as Trimurti, but
they fell in the Battle of Chaos and Order some years
ago.

Shiva was the destroyer, the killing face of
Trimurti. There were other gods of death in all of its many forms.
Yama was the bringer of death, Kali was the goddess of murder.
There are as many gods and goddesses as there are ways to die, or
ways to live for that matter. It took Tom and Karla some time to
understand
who they
were
, but they finally understood.

In the dire times, when the innocent are
threatened with slavery or death, there is a place for the coming
of death to the guilty at the hands of the righteous protectors. In
time the two of them came to understand that they were that hand,
and had always been, down through the centuries and millennia of
Man.

In this place of Thought-forms and animals,
the errant thoughts of these simple creatures do not disturb the
minds of the pair. They have crafted this world to be a place of
peace and pleasure for them, but there are other worlds than this,
and no distance or barrier can mute the prayers of the desperate to
the gods of their need.

Tom stands watching the water spill over into
the abyss that is the deeps of the pool below. Karla stands beside
him, and both their hands and their minds are entwined. With a
fleeting thought, they cause a storm to form in the East. It will
be overhead in a few moments.

Karla leans against him as an errant prayer
reaches their minds. It is a minor raid of one village in a single
Shadow, and at most a hundred souls risked death or rape. They
dispatch an Eidolon into that place to act as Judge and to dispense
justice upon the guilty. They had to set some limits on using
personal attention in these matters. Genocide and extinction are
worthy of their personal attention, otherwise, they send their
Specters.

One of the pterodactyls lands nearby, and eyes
them with interest. Even the ones who have never been hand-fed by
them seem to have an innate belief that the couple was the source
of all things good, including fine foods. Perhaps they had overdone
the hardwiring of their creation’s love response to them. Doubts
are not dispelled when the pterodactyl waddles and hops over to Tom
and leans on his other side.

With one arm around Karla, and the other
absent-mindedly petting the head of the flying reptile, they stand
and enjoy the view for a few more minutes, before deciding to go
down into the Commons to find something fun to eat or to play with.
They make an odd threesome, as the two make their way down the
stairwell, with the reptile following close behind, in its waddle
and hop gait.

The rain is coming down so hard that it seems
to displace the air. Thunder is rolling continuously, and the
lightning is so steady that one can read by it. The clouds have
hidden the three moons, which would otherwise be standing guard
over the Commons. The rain was so hard that the normally leak proof
roof of the vegetable stand that they had sheltered in was
drizzling rain to the floor.

Tom reaches over to the side freezer, where
the sushi that would be central to the use of some of these
vegetables is stored. He takes out a large specimen of fish, and
flips it over to the doting pterodactyl. The reptile catches the
fish just like a dog would, and manages to convey a sense of
gratitude for the gift. Karla telepathically declines a fish of her
own, when Tom graciously offers it.

One of the Tulpas in the form of a red headed
giant comes by, and picks up the pterodactyl in accordance with the
mental order from Tom. The reptile objects for a second, until Tom
sends it the thought that Tom wants him to go with the giant. Karla
smiles at the bond that the creature exhibits for Tom.

Karla reaches across Shadow to pluck a couple
of cigarettes from a nearby pack, and brings them into her presence
already lit. She hands one to Tom, and they stand watching the
storm and smoking. They both realize at the same second that
something is coming, a precognition that they will be involved in
an action in the near future. Tom offers Karla her choice of pizza
from the box of pizza that he has just materialized.

Perhaps an hour later, they finally got the
call. They both hear the call, a prayer from a distant Shadow for
their aid. A species called the Ettema are being wiped out by a
star faring species called the Ordinin, who outclass the Ettema in
technology and in sheer size and ferocity.

The Ettema realize that they are about to
become extinct, and so they call upon the gods, the modern Anutu,
the personification of divine justice. They call upon the gods that
in other places are known as Tom and Karla. Blessed are they to
live in a multiverse where the gods respond.

With the prayer Tom has received a telepathic
wisp, a sort of thought ribbon that leads straight back to the
prayers. Already the couple feels the power uncoil within their
minds, and it starts to spiral in its unique circuits. In front of
them, the air begins to mirror the place that will be their
destination.

Tom and Karla take each other’s hand, and as
the image of the world of the Ettema forms, they step forward into
it. As they step out of the mirror, the world around them is filled
with mists, and the sky overhead is lit by flickering lightning,
almost as if they brought the storm with them from their
world.

They use the sight which is partly of the eye
and partly of the mind to see the slight and delicate Ettema,
hunkered down in what would have been called foxholes in World War
I. There are men there, and women and children as well, and it
looks as if they have no place to escape to. Overhead, dipping in
and out of the storm clouds are aircraft that occasionally strikes
at the Ettema with what appears to be lasers. These then must be
the Ordinin.

The couple slips into the deep mind state that
is the core state of their powers. Breathing in, the power surges
from the places beyond the worlds, and the power surges from the
sky, and the power surges from the earth below. As the power surges
about them, they drink the energy in, and they grow in stature
twice ten times, in preparation of the justice that they must
deal.

With their new formed power, they see the
Ordinin in all ways. They are a robust and predatory species,
having laid waste to many worlds before this one; they seek to
harvest those things they value from the world of the Ettema before
they leave it to die in the dark of space. Looking into their
deepest mind, the Unutu can find no redeeming qualities in this
vicious species.

It is no light thing to sentence a species to
death, and so, for a day and a night and another day, Unutu stops
the actions of both species while they consider. They look beyond
this world, to the other worlds that the Ordinin have visited, and
they look deep into the past times and the past actions of the
Ordinin. They look forward into the various probable futures of the
worlds should the Ordinin perish, and also if they should continue.
These investigations time and time again came up with the same
answer; the local universe was a better place without the Ordinin
in it.

The decision made, all that is left is for
Unutu to deliver the Judgment, and to carry out the sentence. They
let the two species move once more, but they restrict the Ordinin
from further damaging the Ettema.

***The species known as the Ordinin has acted
as an agent of Chaos for its long and bloody history. They have
destroyed the innocent at every opportunity. The Unutu sentence the
Ordinin to extinction in this and every other world***

The judgment delivered, it was now time to
carry out the sentence. Some of the Ordinin craft were attempting
to conduct strafing runs at the pair as they stood in judgment, and
as they approached, the craft would suddenly lose power, and then
they would strike some unseen barrier, and what would happen then
was similar to what would happen if they were to hit any concrete
wall.

Tom and Karla draw up even more power, because
they would be striking not only here, but in distant places many
light years away. As the power swirls and spirals, they urge it to
grow and to come up to the surface. When the power has made its way
to the surface, they release it upon the worlds to complete the
sentence that they have pronounced. They sweep the storm from
existence.

They stand over one hundred foot in stature,
and they cast a long shadow upon the ground. The power now joins
the shadow at their feet, and it strengthens it, and makes it have
a dark substance, it draws the light from around it, and it darkens
into the deepest black. The shadows at their feet swirl, and they
flow, and they seem in all ways to be a living form of
death.

The Shadow lengthens from their feet and flows
toward the horizon in all directions. First, it reaches the Ettema,
who show horror and terror, but the shadow flows around them, never
touching any of them, or any of the other living things around
them. The Shadow flows in that manner until it at last reaches the
nearest of the Ordinin.