Human beings in a mob.

What’s a mob to a king?

What’s a king to god?

What’s a god to a non-believer?

- ‘No Church in the Wild’, JAY-Z, Kanye West and Frank Ocean

Matt Callaghan trudged, through the dark and freezing rain.

He did not know where he was headed; where away was, if there was even a way off this planet, or if there was whether it could be found or safely used. Low orbit, his brain kept nagging at him, and a part of him wondered if Jane would be so vindictive as to move the White World out further into the deepest reaches of space so that even if Matt somehow did find an exit it would lead to naught but asphyxiation and death.

If there even was a way out. This was a planet, spherical, with gravity. There was no escape hatch from Earth. Jane wouldn’t have needed one getting in, so there was no reason to suspect she would have built one to get out. Still, Matt pushed on. If only because it was his choice to do so.

The rain was coming down hard, the ground squelching wet, the ankle‑high grass buoyant and mobile atop sodden earth, mud sucking at his bare feet with every step. Matt’s thin white clothes were soaked through and before long he had had to remove his linen shirt to prevent the damp sticking, though the weather was warm, the rain temperate, not quite humid enough to be tropical. About a mile in he took cover under the branches of a large sequoia tree and ripped the shirt in half with a sharpened rock, tying each piece around his feet as many times as he could to make some form of makeshift shoes. They were beyond flimsy, as far as footwear went, and he had no idea how long they would last, but they might deflect the odd stone or bramble. It was better than nothing. In the current situation, they were the best Matt was going to get.

He kept walking, not throwing more than the occasional glance back at the tower, which was what he was mentally calling the impossibly high structure of pure stone that jutted up and over the wall of distant cliffs, the edge of this Jane’s utopia. The tower rose in a single, sheer flat surface, ninety degrees straight almost to the clouds without so much as a bump or deviation, its flawless white now drenched in the storm clouds’ shadow. Jane liked minimalism he guessed. Or preferred her presence intimidating and stark.

Lightning flashed overhead, illuminating a herd of creatures moving in the distance, a slash of water off to his left and the outer edge of the sequoia forest. Matt could not tell what time of day it was meant to be, whether the entire world had changed, the clouds were so dark, the rain pounding so heavy. If this place even had regular day‑night cycles. For all he knew, the sky literally changed according to Jane’s mood. Which was stormy currently, if you could pardon the pun, judging by the tempest blanketing crashing all around.

Matt wiped rain from his hair and set off in the direction of the herd, having no real goal or direction. If all he could do was explore, then he’d explore. If he found some other genius thought or some other way, he’d take it. But he had to leave.

It’d been his only choice.

*****

Jane hung robes billowing in the storm-wracked sky and glared with gritted teeth down at her fleeing lover.

How dare he? How dare- A thousand acts of cruelty and violence leapt snarling to her the forefront of her thought , pain and punishment she could inflict on this maddening imbecile for making her feel so damn enraged. Leave? Leave?! She’d break his nose, coat him in ceaseless white-hot flames, cut out his tongue, sink his legs into stone for daring to… for having the audacity to…

No. Jane hissed to the churning storm clouds, her entire body trembling with seething, fervent anger. No. This is just what he wanted, he was trying to aggravate her, prove she was some petty vindictive little girl, unstable and incompetent, incapable of creating utopia, unable to do anything right. Hurting him wouldn’t do anything – pain would just prove his point.

High up in the thundering heavens, Jane clenched her fists and ground her teeth. Stupid, close‑minded idiot. Ignorant, infuriating man. She’d show him, she’d show all of them, she’d- argh! In a rush of rage she spun and lashed out, sending a shudder through the earth, watching in the distance as her fury annihilate some far-off mountain range. Fine. Fine! He wanted to go then let him, see how long he lasted, weak soft fool, he’d get it out of his system, questioning her, being like this, ungrateful little… argh!

I don’t care, Jane snarled, sucking storm-lit air between her teeth, I don’t goddamn care. What was he going to do anyway, where was he going to go? She had eternity – endless, endless eternity, and all the power in the world. He’d come back. He always came back. To hell with him, let him have his little protest, let him come back to her a week from now begging, begging that he was wrong. She could almost hear him, see him, feel the immense satisfaction of being right. Oh really? Oh this is the best you could’ve hoped for? What a goddamn shock, what an absolute revelation..! Maybe she wouldn’t even punish him. Maybe she’d just smile, maybe she’d go straight and embrace him, just to show how righteous she was – make him see her benevolence as a god.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Still; the sheer nerve. It rankled her, it absolutely rankled her, and the more she turned and turned it over the more she just wanted to tear fissures in the earth. Leave?! He wanted to leave?! Leave all of this, leave everything she’d built for them, leave her?! Unacceptable, no, she wouldn’t have it. You don’t get to leave perfection. Being happy wasn’t optional. Nobody left her paradise.

You don’t get to say when we’re finished, Jane growled at the wind – and in the dark and stormy distance she watched a speck of a person struggling their way into the night.

*****

Matt sat shivering in a cave and watched the rain continue to fall.

His teeth chattered a little and he kneaded his hands together, though it felt less like hypothermia and more just like his body trying to make itself warm. He’d be okay. He’d ate a lot that morning and this place was just wet, not cold. The rain would let up, sometime. He could try to make a fire, find food. He’d be okay.

What am I doing, a part of him wondered. Just go be happy, give into her, get off your high horse and out of your own way. But it was a strangely surface level thought, not extending into real feeling or conviction. Deep down Matt knew he what he was doing was right.

Jane was going to end up hurting people, and he couldn’t stop her; but he didn’t have to help.

In the end maybe, he knew, it might all become too much for him. The part of Matt that was afraid, that yearned for peace and a sense of comfort would win out over abstract moral convictions, and he’d end up convincing himself that resistance was hopeless, that giving in was simply making the best of his current lot. Maybe eventually hunger, weariness, the deep‑seated animal needs of his body would exert their irresistible power and force him to relent. But he hadn’t got there yet. And just because you might not be able to do the right thing later wasn’t a reason not to do it now.

Step by step. Choice by choice. I will do the best I can where I am; not just do what’s best for myself.

*****

Jane sat on a throne in an empty hall and glowered as her swept across her kingdom with her mind.

There were things to do – land that needed shaping. Yet with Matt gone it seemed all Jane could summon the energy for was to scowl, and to occasionally throw inanimate objects, sending them shattering into the endless white stone walls. Things that broke she could repair with the barest glance, and time she had in limitless abundance, so it was not waste nor loss which gnawed at her. It was this boiling anger she was still feeling, searing beneath her white mark and silk vestments, the sensation so crude, so childlike, so revoltingly human. She hated Matt for making her feel like this. She hated herself for her unbidden silent retort that maybe he wasn’t in charge of her feelings. She hated wondering if anything he said might’ve been true.

This frustration, too, was compounded by a splitting headache. Jane at first hadn’t noticed the painful tightness creeping in under her forehead or the stinging beneath her temples, so rooted was she in the assumption that she was above such mortal inconveniences. Yet the pain continued to grow as if from a sleepless night or dehydration, which only made Jane grit her teeth, as she needed neither sleep nor water now.

It did not take her long reflecting to find the culprit. A glaze of the eyes, a glance towards the shimmering tapestry of time, brought Jane face to face again with the paradox, the waiting jet-black maw consuming everything that ever was and ever will be. A choice, the Time Child had called it. Every time Jane brushed the surface of time in concert with her other powers she felt it lingering there, this darkened haze inching ever closer. It frustrated her, more than frightened her, because with her newfound Divinity the idea of fear was laughable. What the freaking hell was it? What could possibly be so wrong with the world, with the universe that she couldn’t destroy or correct it with all these powers at her disposal? What goddamn challenger could now possibly present itself that the power of a god could not overcome?

Yet still the blackened void persisted, its gaping mouth an abyss swallowing all of reality. She had time, she thought. Literally, she should have had unlimited time. Yet every time Jane turned her eyes to the thing, she swore it drew closer. Consumed more of the glowing life threads.

What had the child said? ‘Someday soon you will have to choose between Matt Callaghan and the world’? But she didn’t have to. Matt and the world were still perfectly fine, their existences perfectly compatible. Every time she’d faced an instance where it’d seemed like she was going to lose one of them, where it’d looked like she’d have to make a choice, Jane had overcome it. And now here she sat, godlike, with limitless power beneath her control.

So why was the singularity still looming?

“Go away,” she growled at it. The pending collapse of the universe at the edge of her extratemporal vision did not hear her, instead continuing to consume the sum total of reality. Jane balled her hands into fists. She was tempted to dive into time, to fly headfirst at the thing and blast it into nothingness, pummel enough golden light into it to tear it asunder. But a small, quiet part of her knew that wouldn’t work. And although she hated listening to that small part mostly, for now she resentfully heeded it.

Work. She just had to continue the work. The problem was that the concept hadn’t been clear enough. If she could just push on, create more, really show Matt her vision, a functioning paradise, then maybe he would snap out of whatever crusade he thought he was chasing. Jane closed her eyes and envisioned the cities, towers of glass and silver and marble, waterfalls flowing from rooftop lakes and sidewalks blossoming with flowers. She imagined the underground caverns, cities of stone never needing the sun, stalactites ringed with golden lighting, deep and cool and flowing serene into the earth’s calm heart. She imagined floating metropolises, towers and domes on metal wings soaring adrift rising thermals, skies of glass and latticework, souls never touching the ground. She imagined it all, she imagined everything, and then when Jane reached down with her hands she created it, her four rings alive and singing, spinning all the complexity she could dream.