Chapter 19: Are you there, God? It’s Me, Your Least Favorite Person Apparently
“And then two days ago, you arrived, and well, you know what’s happened since then!” Fall concluded his story and sat down. Cecily sighed. I knew all the rest, too, since you all have lived the exact same life, she thought glumly. The little tribe had stuck together since each of its members was created, so other than some stylistic differences, their stories were all pretty much identical. The only interesting variety had come from a pair named Acorn and Swallow, who had briefly travelled on their own before deciding they preferred the comforts of home and friends.
This was the second full day of storytelling, and it felt like Cecily had been forced to binge watch the same episode of the same TV show for hours on end. She had wanted to get through everyone so they would let her talk to Baby, but now she felt like the marathon storytelling was slowly killing her braincells and will to live. How do they not get tired of this? she wondered, hearing everyone applaud Fall’s story as if they hadn’t all lived it and then re-lived it a dozen times in the last day and a half. There were breaks, of course: the group still took a few hours off to prepare breakfast, lunch, and dinner and to do chores, but that still left them with a good eight hours throughout the day to regale Cecily with their repetitive yarns.
She had made progress, though: about half of the villagers had told their stories already, and she suspected they could get through a few more this afternoon and evening and hopefully be finished with everyone by the end of the day tomorrow. The more time she wasted here, the more aware she was of the fact that she had no idea where August, Ravioli Girl, and Amy were, and even if she got some answers from Baby, she still wouldn’t be able to do anything until she found them.
“I think we can fit in one more story before making lunch,” Beginning said. “Who’s next?” Keep raised his hand to volunteer, but before he could start describing his first moments of life, there was a crunching noise from the bushes outside the pavilion.
Cecily turned and saw a large purple shape emerge from the trees, with a smaller brown shape on top. It took her a few moments to even comprehend what she was seeing. “August?” she called out. “Are you riding a giant kitten?”
“Hi, Silly!” August yelled from his seat on top of the kitten. He grabbed onto its fur and ungracefully climbed down, and Cecily ran to meet him when got to the ground. He grabbed her in a tight hug and held it long enough for Cecily to realize just how worried he’d been to be separated. “I’m so glad I found you!” he said when they finally pulled apart.
“Me, too!” Cecily said, still processing the image of her brother riding a huge purple cat. “But, how did you find me? And do you know where the others are?”
August rubbed the back of his neck. “Well, Echo and I ended up in the same place, and then we got the house to land there, too, but it wasn’t ready to teleport again, so Echo stayed behind with it. One of her pastas allows for a telepathic connection, so yesterday I got in touch with Bright and he told me how to find you. I think he and Amy are going to meet us here.”
There were several parts of that story that Cecily was curious about, but the most pressing question was, “Why did you make a telepathic connection with Bright of all people?”
August grimaced. “Believe me, he wasn’t my top choice either. But, it worked out, and he said Baby is somewhere near here!”
Cecily nodded, then it was her turn to grimace. “Yeah, the people who live here were going to take me to see Baby after they each tell me their entire life story.” Speaking of those people… Cecily turned to look back, and saw the multicolored villagers staring at her and August as they spoke.
“Hey, guys!” she called back to them. “This is my brother August!”
The obnoxious optimists took that as an invitation to swarm the twins and each introduce themselves to August. “It’s so good to finally meet you,” Keep said, as if he had known about August’s existence for more than two days. August looked overwhelmed but was polite as always as he greeted each person.
“Are you hungry, August?” Beginning asked. “We were going to make lunch soon!”
August looked taken aback by her weird baby voice, but recovered quickly. “Lunch sounds amazing,” he admitted. “I haven’t eaten in a bit.” Upon hearing that, the villagers slowly scattered to begin their long meal-prepping procedures, and Cecily led August to the pavilion to sit down. The giant lavender kitten yawned and curled up in a ball between two trees on the edge of the clearing, appearing to doze off. That’s a relief, Cecily thought, remembering her last encounter with the oversized felines. Evidently they still liked August, and that might mean they still hated her.
While the villagers prepared lunch, Cecily and August caught up. He explained why the house had acted so strangely while teleporting and told her about the End of the World, where he and Echo had landed. Cecily was a little miffed that he’d gotten to hang out with Ravioli Girl while she’d had to fend for herself, but that wasn’t his fault. She then summarized Beginning’s story about the origins of intelligent life and the arrival and departure of the French.
August looked awestruck. “So there have been whole groups of people brought here from Earth in the past? That’s huge!”
“Yeah, but I don’t think any of them ever made it back to Earth.”
He nodded. “That’s what it seems like, but maybe we just don’t hear about the ones that did make it back because not enough people here knew them.”
That outlook was a little too optimistic for Cecily’s taste, but still a valid idea. “That could be true,” Cecily agreed hesitantly.
“And this Creator, that may be the biggest revelation!” August exclaimed. “It answers so many questions about how this world works.”
“It does?”
“Yes! On Earth, everything depends on the laws of nature to keep running, but if there is some deity that is actually present and deliberately manipulating things, maybe they can circumvent the need for laws, at least some of the time,” August speculated. “It’s like how some people think evolution isn’t real because everything is run by intelligent design instead: in this world those people would be right! Things–and even people–can just get created out of nothing.”
Cecily watched her brother getting excited about the philosophy of the world and smiled. He’s the smart one for a reason, she thought. It was good to see him get the chance to exercise that big brain of his. This place killed enough brain cells that the survivors needed a reason to live.
Lunch only took an hour for the villagers to prepare today, and soon Cecily and August were seated at a table with plates of sandwiches and fruit, all of it delicious. Even after a few days here, the villagers’ slow and methodical way of doing everything, including eating, hadn’t rubbed off on Cecily, and she scarfed down her food and got seconds. August seemed to be trying to imitate their hosts out of respect, but he was still hungry enough to refill his plate.
After lunch and cleaning up, the group gathered again to talk to August. “So, would you be willing to tell us your story, August?” Beginning asked. August’s face brightened, but Cecily subtly shook her head at him and he furrowed his eyebrows.
“Well, it sounds like Cecily has already told you our story,” he said slowly, watching Cecily’s face as she nodded to encourage him to keep following that logic. “So, I don’t think it is particularly necessary right now! Maybe another time.”
Cecily sighed with relief and gave August a grateful smile. August smiled back, then turned back to Beginning. “I heard that Baby lives nearby! I’m eager to meet him,” he said with a bright smile. Cecily crossed her fingers, hoping that having two people express interest in meeting Baby would be enough to skip the storytelling and get right to the main event.
But Beginning just nodded. “Yes, we’re going to go visit him once we’ve finished filling you in about our stories!” She paused and looked at Cecily. “Should we start over since your brother missed half of our stories, or fill him in later?”
“Not start over!” Cecily nearly yelled. She took a deep breath and forced a smile. “Let’s just continue from where we left off, and I can fill in any gaps for August later.”
Beginning shrugged. “Sure. Keep, were you going to go next?”
The would-be Disney Channel heartthrob hopped up and started his story. August looked fascinated, as Cecily knew he would, but she tuned out most of it. She was glad to know that the rest of their group was okay and was looking forward to seeing Echo again– less so for Amy and especially Bright. Still, it would all be fine as long as she got the answers she’d come for, although she was getting increasingly worried that Baby wouldn’t have anything new to add and she would just have to listen to the same history of the world that she’d already heard way too many times.
Keep talked for a good forty minutes, then August had the gall to have questions afterward. Cecily kept from groaning as her brother piped up to ask for clarification on how the people were created, what their relationship with the French had been like, and where their clothing and recipes had come from, among other things. Some of the other villagers contributed to the answers, and it evolved into a full group discussion. That was a lot more interesting to listen to than one person talking, but it was still reiterating things Cecily had already heard or asked about.
After a while of Q&A, a woman named Fair stepped up for her turn on the pulpit. Hell, he actually looks excited for this, Cecily thought as she watched August’s face. “You have an unfair advantage,” she whispered to him.
“What’s that?” he whispered back, still looking at the speaker.
“You’ve had a year of practice listening to college lectures. Those are probably even more boring than this.”
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
“Sometimes,” he agreed. “But it helps a lot if you enjoy the subject, and I find these people fascinating.”
Just give it another few hours of repetition and you won’t be quite as fascinated, Cecily thought grimly.
She didn’t have time to see her prophecy come to pass, because they experienced their second interruption of the day about halfway through Fair’s story. It came in the form of Bright swooping down into the clearing and landing just outside the pavilion, closely followed by Amy, who jogged after him on foot.
“Aha!” Amy yelled triumphantly. “We made it!” Her hair wasn’t in a ponytail anymore and hung windswept and messy. She was also wearing different clothes than she had been two days ago when they’d been separated, so she had apparently found some kind of civilization. Cecily was still wearing her original clothes, which she knew smelled terrible, but she wanted to be able to make a quick escape at any moment and didn’t want to leave some of her last Earth souvenirs behind.
“More people?” Keep asked, looking like Oprah had just told him to look under his chair.
Cecily narrowed her eyes at Bright, who returned the expression. Before she could find a way to appropriately chastise him for his ass-holery the other day, her attention was pulled to Amy, who was gawking at the villagers’ colorful and patterned skin. “What is this place?” she asked Cecily, coming into the pavilion and squeezing onto Cecily and August’s bench.
“It’s a very old place full of immortal people,” Cecily summed up curtly. “Where have you been?”
“Nowhere as cool as here!” Amy said eagerly, still marveling at Keep and his friends. “Bright said this is the forest where Baby lives, right?”
“Yes, is this the forest you remembered seeing before?” August asked, and Amy laughed.
“Nope, I’ve never been here in my life! It’s a good thing I guessed right that he lived in an old forest, right?”
Cecily didn’t know if she wanted to bang her own head or Amy’s against the table, but she didn’t have time to decide before Beginning approached Amy with a look in her eyes that Cecily had started to identify as the omen of story time. “What’s your name?” Beginning asked. “Would you tell us about yourself?”
“My name is Amy,” the mechanic said with a grin. “I’m from Earth, like Cecily and August here. What’s your name?”
“I’m Beginning!” the girl answered in her weird baby voice. “We’ve really been enjoying Cecily, so I can’t wait to get your story, too!”
“Actually,” Bright whispered from behind Cecily, where he had apparently snuck up without her noticing, “we were going to speak with Baby.”
“Oh, I know!” Beginning said cheerfully. “We were going to take Cecily and August to talk to him as soon as we’re all finished with our own stories!”
Bright stared at her expressionlessly. “No, we’d like to talk to him now instead.”
Beginning’s smile faltered, as did the glow of her skin. “But… What’s your hurry? Don’t you want to hear everyone else’s stories?”
“We don’t,” Bright whispered. “We aren’t interested in your stories; we came here for Baby. Stop wasting our time.”
“Bright!” August gasped, looking mortified. But Bright stood his ground, and Cecily watched as Beginning’s resolve crumbled.
“Fine, then,” she said, her mouth turning down in a small pout. “We’ll take you to Baby now. I do hope you’ll listen to our stories after, though.”
“I doubt it,” Bright said, causing Beginning’s frown to deepen. She turned around and started walking away, waving for them to follow.
“Bright, that was so rude!” August said as he, Cecily, and Amy got up to walk after Beginning. Amy at least had the decency to look embarrassed at Bright’s behavior, but she didn’t contradict him. August folded his arms and glared at Bright. “These people have taken care of Cecily for days and have been nothing but kind!”
“I’m sure you and your sister are glad to be taken care of by people who are more competent than yourselves,” Bright whispered, “but only an idiot would waste days of their lives to appease someone they’ll never see again.”
August still looked horrified, and he glanced at Cecily for validation, but she shrugged. “I’m not gonna lie, he kind of has a point. I’m not saying he should have been that rude, but he just saved us at least a day of sitting around.”
“But… but…” August sputtered. “Kindness still matters!”
Bright shook his head. “You and your desperate need to be wanted,” he murmured as he veered to the side to walk a short distance away from the rest of the group, stretching his wings out before tucking them against his back again. What was that last part about? Cecily wondered, noticing August blush.
It took about half an hour of walking through the woods to reach Baby’s cabin. Cecily pointedly ignored Amy during that whole walk, not because she wasn’t curious about where Amy had been over the last two days, but because she didn’t want to share any of the potentially groundbreaking information she had gotten from Beginning and the other villagers. Cecily still wanted to get whatever help she could from Amy, but she wanted to give as little help as possible in the process, especially considering Amy’s deranged goal to take over the world–or a small piece of it, anyway.
When they arrived at Baby’s house, Cecily found herself looking at a massive log house, the kind that a millionaire would own and refer to simply as “the cabin.” It was probably three stories tall and was a rich brown wood that must have come from this forest. There were large windows with curtains pulled over them so Cecily couldn’t see inside, but she could see light peeking through a small gap in one of the curtains.
The one small thing about the house was the door: it was barely five feet tall, and Beginning crouched slightly as she knocked on it, then stepped back. Cecily waited with bated breath. What would Baby be like? Would he be willing to talk to them? Would he even be helpful, or was this whole trip for nothing?
After a minute, Beginning knocked again. This time only a few seconds passed before the door opened a crack. “What do you want?” a youthful voice demanded.
“I have some new friends that want to meet you,” Beginning said pleasantly, apparently having either forgiven the group for Bright’s rudeness or masterfully hidden her irritation. “Would you be willing to speak with them?”
“New people? And they wanted to talk to me specifically?”
“Yes on both accounts,” Beginning answered. “I didn’t even tell them about you before they started asking to be introduced. They have some very interesting stories, I can promise you that!”
The door opened wider and Cecily finally saw who they were dealing with. Baby was a child, probably about six, with brown skin and thick black curls that looked quite a bit like August’s when he let his hair grow out a little, which he had in these two months without a barber. He was wearing a green shirt with brown overalls and although Cecily didn’t like kids, she had to admit he was pretty cute. She’d been expecting either an immortal infant or an extremely old man, but Baby looked like your average kindergartener.
“Who are you guys?” he asked, looking over Cecily, August, Amy, and Bright.
August took the lead, which was probably for the best. “Oh, I’m August and this is my sister Cecily, and our friends Amy and Bright.” Cecily thought that “friends” was a pretty generous term for the person who sent killer robots after their neighbor and the one who insulted them constantly, but she supposed those descriptions would have made for a more cumbersome introduction.
Baby folded his arms. “Okay, why did you want to talk to me?” Yikes, Cecily thought. He may look like a little kid but he behaves like a mob boss. She looked again at his opulent and secluded house. Shit, what if he is a mob boss? Do they have those here? Beginning gave everyone a small wave and began meandering back toward her village, leaving Cecily and the others at the mercy of an ancient being that looked like a Gap Kids model.
The little boy was still staring them down and August was clearly struggling to formulate his response, so Cecily jumped in before Amy–or worse, Bright–could say something to mess up the opportunity. “August, Amy, and I are from Earth,” she said, “and we were wondering if you know how to get back to Earth from here, seeing as you have the most experience living here in general.”
Baby sighed and uncrossed his arms. “She’s still doing that, huh?”
“Who is still doing what?” Cecily asked.
“The Creator. I thought she would have stopped bringing people here from Earth once this world’s population got up and running, but I guess she didn’t.”
“She? God is a woman?” Cecily couldn’t help smiling a little. I knew it.
“More relevantly,” August said, giving Cecily a sidelong glance, “do you know her personally? Do you know if she could send us home?”
Baby sighed again with an expression that was way too tired and thoughtful for a little boy’s face. “It’s a bit more complicated than that,” he said, stepping aside and gesturing into the log mansion. “Why don’t you come in and sit down?”
The inside of Baby’s house served as confirmation that, although the boy was hundreds of years old and talked like an adult, he was still a child at heart. The first level of his house was all open, with no rooms, and was filled with toys and playground equipment made from wood and metal. There was even a twisty slide descending through a hole in the ceiling, presumably from the top floor. I want to go on that before we leave, Cecily thought, trying to look up through the hole to see the top of the slide.
Baby flopped down on one of the many beanbag chairs and gestured for the others to do the same. Cecily and August sat near Baby, but Bright stayed standing near the door and Amy selected a bean bag closer to him. Cecily couldn’t tell if Baby had made all this stuff himself or gotten help, but she didn’t want to derail the conversation when they were finally on the verge of answers.
Baby took a deep breath and promptly crushed Cecily’s hope. “The Creator can’t send you home,” he said bluntly.
“Wait, what?” Cecily and August said in unison. “Why not?” Cecily demanded. “You said she brought us here, why can’t she send us back?”
“Because she can’t do anything on purpose,” Baby said. “She doesn’t know how. She just wants something and subconsciously makes it happen. For example, she was lonely, so I was created to keep her company. Then she didn’t understand how to make a self-sustaining civilization, so a bunch of people and plants from Earth were transported here as examples, but it was all happening subconsciously. Back when I knew her, I don’t think she even knew she was the Creator. She may have figured it out by now, but I doubt she has much more control over what she does or you probably wouldn’t be here right now.”
“That doesn’t make any sense!” Cecily protested, but August shook his head.
“No, Silly,” he said, speaking slowly in a voice that bordered on awe-struck. “It makes everything else finally make sense. Earlier I mentioned the debate on Earth between evolution and intelligent design; well, this place seems to be running on a third option: unintelligent design. If everything is created by an omnipotent maker, but it’s all made unconsciously, that explains why things are able to exist in such a weird state! It’s all so eccentric and random, it’s almost like it was designed by…” August’s eyes widened. “Oh, shit.”
August tended to swear sparingly, so Cecily felt a spike of worry. “What is it?”
August was still staring at the air as if he could see the answers floating in front of him. “It’s almost like it was designed by a child,” he said quietly. “Baby, does the Creator have a name?”
Cecily had another moment of confusion, then gasped. “You don’t think… not Glow!”
August started pacing. “She drew a picture of twins right before we arrived, trees pop up by her house and spread out in waves... and dinosaurs! Those scaly monsters that chased us were supposed to be dinosaurs!” He grimaced. “Why did I make up a story about those?
Cecily shook her head, unable to believe what she was hearing. “You can’t be serious. I mean, Glow? The Creator?”
Baby looked horrified and finally interrupted them. “You shouldn’t… I mean, don’t…” He took a deep inhale and exhale. “I’ve already told you the Creator can’t help you get home, so you have no reason to go looking for her, wherever and whoever she may happen to be.”
“But–” Cecily started to speak, then heard the door abruptly open and slam shut. She looked toward it and her blood ran cold. Bright and Amy were gone, and she had a pretty good guess as to where they were heading.