The room was cold. It was a strange thought to have at first, but I couldn't get past the fact that I felt that a place like this should be hot, teeming with Sparks of energy and the motions that made up everything that was life and death. No, the room was cold.

I got up and stretched as I walked around the room and the strange sculpture in its center. I examined its damaged and battered form as I walked back and forth, trying to understand what I should do now. A slow understanding was coming to me but it was vague and painful.

I ignored my predecessor in the corner. They were dead, and its strange iridescent vital fluids had yet to stop pumping, so cleaning up would do nothing. I would just have to wait. I was in a fluid state of confusion and knowledge. I had in a moment become all-knowing, in an anti-climatic moment I was aware of all things. 

All that strange new knowledge simply handed me an answer to life, the universe, and everything. There were forty two tasks to be performed on this part of the machine before it can be slotted back in and continue operating.

Gifted with the cruel knowledge that I now held, I understood what had happened. It had taken me a few moments to process all the knowledge to ever have been conceived but when I did I remembered how to hate. I hated the now dead being in the corner. 

Its cowardice, its weakness had damned me to something beyond hell and death just because it was too weak to do what had to be done. The coward, the damnable beast, was obviously not human, so if I ever found its species, I would enact terrible vengeance upon them for producing this failure of a creature. 

I carved its figure into my mind. It was a being of light and interconnecting angles which had obviously gone mad and killed itself via a novel type of entropic decay. It stopped existing the moment the lesson was comprehended as its existence would only hamper my duty.  There was no greater crime than giving up here. No greater indignity could a people and culture suffer than failing to do what needed to be done in this place.

I should explain; I was currently in a place between death and never existing in the first place. In a moment of grand misfortune I had been selected as the caretaker of The God Machine. A machine so powerful that it was the basis of existence. It had simply generated from energy and thought, dream and matter. When it was made it reached back through time and made itself again and again. That's what it was; Everything all at once. The firmament on which reality, all realities, based their rules and foundations.

A perfect creation unmarred by fallible mortal or immortal hands, but just as it had made everything, even itself, so had it made entropy and the end; thus, it would have to enact those upon itself as well. It was the cycle of creation and annihilation. Annihilation however was not its main duty, it was simply an aspect of it. It was meant to create and yet it must destroy. That is the fallacy of its own creation. The God Machine had created all and yet everything must have an end point, even itself. This is where the caretakers enter the picture.

There had been many. I was not the first, nor would I likely be the last. I was there to take care of it, repair it and ensure that in the time that I was its caretaker it did not fall any further. Although The God Machine must be destroyed, for in its second act it had proclaimed all things must come to an end; even itself, that does not mean that it could not be prolonged by its ever so creative children. It had plucked me from my space and time, erasing me from future, present, and past. I was nothing more or less than the caretaker now.

I had been made nothing, and in the transition it had taken from me everything that it could. I knew not face, I knew not name, I knew not culture, nor language. It had stripped me of everything and filled me back up with the circular silence of its own matter and creation. Pure purpose of which I'm sure that no mortal could experience. 

For a moment I felt nothing more than a pure blinding rage. It could have taken from me even this feeling. It could have done the kind thing and made me a gear; an unfeeling arbiter of maintenance until I too broke down. An ever ticking clock made to assist it in its grand purpose. Rage against the machine I told myself, burn this monstrous thing to the ground and allow creation to fall to blissful nothing. There was a hammer in my hand, it looked like a simple thing but I knew that if I started to smash the God Machine to pieces I could. It would take forever and a day but I could do it. It would not stop me from enacting my will, be it for good or for ill, for that too was a part of the perfection of The God Machine. My heart cooled after a moment. The problem with perfect knowledge of all things is that you cannot help but understand; and I understood.

The machine was a facilitator of the Beginning and the End. Whatever you did on your path it did not care. For a moment I felt as Griffith did before the Heart of Evil.

“Do as you will Chosen One.”

The machine was there and it will be there until it is not. What you did while it was there it did not, could not, and will never care. Just as long as you were. If you existed to waste, utilize, or abuse its gifts, that was your decision. In that moment I was broken just as all great poets and kings eventually are; when they realize the only thing standing between them and all the world was the act of doing.

I knew that I could not help but work on it. It had made me, and now I was a part of it as much as any gear or sprocket. That did not mean that I was not important or anything less than vital to its purposes. Many solutions to inevitability had been sought, and now it was my turn.

I turned my attention to the machine and knew that the small portion that I observed was nothing in comparison to its true size or grand purpose. It appeared as a golden spike sprouting out of the ground, sharp on all edges but marred by  an imperfect finish and strange reflections. I looked closer and saw eyes and teeth and mouths staring back. The beings within seemed confused and frightened as they glimpsed something far beyond them. I was a monster that they could hardly understand, just as they had been to me the moment before my apotheosis.  

I did not need to look for tools for any work that I would do upon the machine that was merely metaphorical, a cleaning of the edges, an oiling of Springs and sprockets. The act of doing it was enough. A rag came to hand, and a chemical cleaner came to the other. I set to work slowly, ensuring that the finish of the spike was set and as I did, the cries of distant not-things ended. 

In the sweep of my little cloth rag I destroyed and created. Where I passed a new creation lay perfect and beautiful, the apple of my eye. Each sweep showed me the untold numbers of lives and creatures in a variety of forms and functions. In that same hand I removed the old creations that had rotted in the time from when this part of the God Machine had first been created.

It took hours, perhaps days, to completely clean the spike to a point where nothing shines out of its surface but what it reflects off the room. I looked at this tiny insignificant part that I had cleaned and knew that neither I nor any predecessor that had been here would have ever been enough to ensure that the God Machine did not fall. 

I observed the heart of the machine, something deep and terrible and good and wonderful, far distant from here. The machine had tried to be too much of everything that was good and evil. Spreading out infinitely in all directions attempting to ensure that all things existed and ended within its purview. It was a kindness and a cruelty that it attempted to allow everything to be all at once. 

I was the caretaker. I did not have the time to be good nor the time to be evil. I did not get to make the choice. The god machine was failing, that was simply the reality of the situation. It could not be allowed to fail. 

I thought about what I must do from the perspective of a human, a simple man with his rag. I allowed all the options to run through my head and nodded to myself when I decided. 

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The word “caretaker” meant many things to the multitudes across all creations. To some it meant a raiser of young to others it meant a culling of the weak. For across all time and space reality was determined by culture and species. It was honed by need and perspective. The God Machine was the dream of a child, to be all things. That dream to be everywhere all at once was an absurdity, thus if I was its caretaker then I must be the adult and curb the excess of a child. 

“You can’t eat cake at every meal, you must at times also have your broccoli.” I whispered those words to an empty white room, the first words of my tenure here. Mayhaps I should have stuck to something more grand. 

The God Machine was a bloated voluminous child and thus triage must be administered. Cut off the foot so the body may survive. A great culling unlike anything ever seen before, everywhere all at once. Terrible terrible things would need to be done in the name of existence, in the name of continuation, in the name of staving off entropy and cessation.

I got up and turned around. The small square room had changed at that moment. A new piece of the god machine tarnished with blemishes and black sludge that seeped and screamed was ready for my inspection. I ignored it. If I was alone I would never be able to keep up with the corruption and rot by myself. I needed assistance from the only person that I could go to. 

Myself. 

To fix the God Machine I would need to make more of myself, which was a rather simple affair but that would not curtail the growth. The growth even in this moment was infinite in all directions, backwards and forwards in time. If I was to save the God Machine I would need to be larger than infinite. I would need to be everything and more. I needed more of me and they would need to be beyond powerful. The Von Neumann Machine is me and I am the Machine.

I could create lesser machines to do my will but that wouldn’t change anything. I needed them to be near the same level as me to affect the God Machine in the same way I do. There can only ever be one caretaker.

So I would need to do something that no caretaker had ever done, actually break parts of the machine to my own use. The Plan was simple, I would impose my own reflection into different parts of the Machine. They would be lesser reflections but they could grow and once they had grown enough the Part would become like me, not the caretaker but a piece of the God Machine that would work like one. This would create cascading issues as all parts of the machine interlocked so heavily that even the minute gravitational pull that they held on each other was part of their functioning. That was fine; once we were many we could fix what had been broken. I had a little speech prepared for my reflection so he would know his purpose.

A door with a sign appeared on one of the walls. I read the sign as I walked out. 

Keter, The Crown of Creation

I walked out into a hall of Infinite doors which even now was turning and twisting; disappearing into nothingness in a horizon in the far distance. A simple visualization that would help my reflections keep their minds in the long run. I would begin with those parts I felt were too far gone. I turned right and opened the first door. Inside a golden spike stood, it's rotting burning edifice enraging me beyond words. I walked up to it and cleaned a small part of it with my rag. When I was able to see my reflection I frowned into it. 

“If we are to be what we are to become. Then laws must be laid down. I will tell you about them in a moment but first I must apologize for your existence. It will be a cruel thing and we must never be that. Cold, yes, but never cruel.” My reflection did not move with me as I spoke, it was its own being now even as I carved it into a shape of my liking. If it could scream in pain it would. If it could kill me it would. If it could beg it would.

“We are Keter now. The Laws of Keter are as Follows. First, The God Machine is failing. Second, the God Machine cannot be allowed to fail. Third, there may only be one Caretaker. Fourth, the Caretaker is Keter. Fifth, Only Keter may be Keter. Sixth, Keter is Keter is Keter. Seventh, Keter Must Follow the Steps to the Crown of Creation. Eighth, All Things Descend from the Crown of Creation. Ninth, Keter must return to the Crown of Creation.” It begged me with its eyes not to continue but I did as I in one sweeping act ripped away its will and ability to disobey. I took a breath. 

“The Steps to the Crown of Creation are as follows.” In this moment I would make this poor thing that had once been me into a machine. A part. An Item. It was antithetical to all things the God Machine stood for but I was not placed here to make easy choices. I pulled together all the knowledge necessary for this reflection to control this part of the machine as the rotting gods and elder things, now just cowering faults in the metal, had done. 

“I will explain them in order and the reason why. When I am finished you will become what you will become and then you will express my will.” I may have well flayed its soul open at that moment.

“The first Step is Tyranny Over the Hearts of Man. It is only in controlling the will of those within the Part will you be able to corrupt its purpose to our ends. For their freedom, their will is that of the Parts and thus if we are to control it we must control that will.” 

“Second, Supremacy Over The Normalcy of the World. For what we do now is against the will of the God Machine and only in the absolute control of that normal purpose may we change it.”

“Third, Power over the Limits of the Self. It is only in complete control of your body, of the immense power of what we are, of Keter itself is the rest possible. We are made to be beyond all those in all creations everywhere. That is to best serve the God Machine so we will always be able to achieve power beyond that of the ken of mortality.”

“Fourth, Dominion Over The Transient Heart. In becoming the Part you are about to become you will be connected to that world. At this step you must destroy those connections. Remove yourself from any will to save them. Lay to rest any hope that you can be anything other than what you are. To them you are the coming annihilation. You are to become their world, inhabit their hearts, and love each of them with the mercy of a parent. In the same breath you express your love for them you must know that you will be the one to destroy them.”

“Fifth, Hegemony Over The Eternal Soul. You must become me, as the Sixth Law states, Keter is Keter is Keter. You must join your purpose to mine in all ways that matter. Collect what remains of soul after tearing your connections to the world and finish becoming me. If there is ever a step you can fumble it is here. To complete this step you must not just understand what your purpose is but move to enact it. There is no turning back now. If you are to fall after this you will be nothing and less than nothing. Know with surety that if you fail I will ensure that.”

“Sixth, Sovereignty Over Creation. Here you must rise to the top of creation to be master of it. You will both cradle and grip all things in your fist. No one may be above you, as when you are what you will become you will only be below The God Machine and Myself.”

“Seventh, Ascendancy Over All Things. The world will stop looking like the world at this step. You will see that what you are becoming is inevitable and the steps are laid clear before you. You are the observer watching the gears of a clock tick towards midnight. Look not down sweet child, for all those that you knew before were arguments that, in deciphering, will lead you to the conclusion. They are all just parts of the truth. They move with as much control over their lives as electrons have over their movement. This is where you complete the hold your will has over the world. You are to become the clock. You will become the Part and in that becoming you will enact my will.”

“Eighth, Coalescence of the Dao. This is the step where you will separate from me and become yourself. What you were before was the fetus, here you will become the baby. I care not what you focus your truth on, but know this. You are my reflection and a reflection may only capture one angle. I am all things now as I am part of the Crown of Creation. In becoming the Dao, In expressing your truth you will only be able to be one part of the whole. You will never be me. You may babble that the Sixth Law states otherwise but you forget that we are both Parts of The God Machine and The God Machine is nothing if not a contradiction.”

“Ninth, Perfection of the Truth. You will become your own truth, a final enactment of it in totality. You will need to complete a feat great enough to force the entirety of everything to recognize your truth and the truth of the part are one and the same. It will need to be something that will ring backwards and forwards through time. It is on this step that you will understand that you were inevitable. You will look back and see the echoes of this act you were simply too naïve to recognize. In the penultimate step you will be a child on the cusp of something greater.”

“The final tenth step, Collapse to Rise. While the rest may vary for each different Keter in each different part this once is the same every time. Clean yourself. You must be as resplendent as the day the Part was first birthed by The God Machine because in truth that's what this is; a rebirth. In doing so you will be destroying all that you have loved in the past, were in the present, and could have been in the future. As you wipe away the grime of all that existed before the only thing that will be left is Keter.” I turned from my reflection now just a flayed corpse of what once was. 

“There; I have damned you enough. I return to my work. Come speak to me when you are done.” I left the room for The Crown of Creation.

In that moment an eternity passed and the part began to move.