Outside of space time Jo stirred, she had been in the place between spaces for an indistinguishable amount of time, mainly because she was outside of the space time continuum , beyond any anthropic consideration, where time did not exist, hence an indistinguishable amount of time.

But enough of that, she had things to do, universes to create.

First, she placed the palms of her hands together, then she wrapped them around each other, sealing off a tiny hollow inside. With an awkwardness she inspected the seal, twisting her wrists this way and that. It looked good. She raised her hands to her lips and between the two thumbs she blew gently, a little bit of breath escaped, she adjusted her lips slightly and tried again, nothing escaped, perfect.

Taking slow deep breaths Jo prepared herself for what was next. This was the difficult part. If the seal were to break for even a fraction of a zeptosecond, which being outside of time meant the zeptosecond was more metaphorical than physical, then the whole thing would be a failure. Also, her hands were more of a metaphor than real, as she was outside of space as well as time.

Yes, her breath is also a metaphor. Best to think of everything as a metaphor until told otherwise.

Jo blew, she could feel the shower of sparks in her cheeks as capillaries exploded, and yet she continued to blow. Her vision starting to tingle and yet she continued to blow. The pressure and temperature built and built in the isochoric chamber between her hands.

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Then she stopped.

Moving her lips away from her hands she sealed her thumbs together tightly, she took a brief moment to relax. Jo’s hands glowed faintly from the heat within being turned into light. Through her skin and blood Jo could see the chaos of a beginning.

It was not over yet though, firmly she pressed her hands together, the heat and pressure increased as the volume became less and less. Soon the air was so dense that Jo was able to roll a tiny little ball bearing around in her hand.

It was beautiful, perfectly smooth without a blemish on it. The energy inside was totally at rest.

Jo reached out, back into dimensional space and placed the ball bearing carefully in a nice location. This was not a metaphor.

Next came her favourite moment of the whole process, she flicked the ball bearing into the time stream, giving it the initial energy it needed to start expanding and observed.

She watched as it exploded outwards, as the quark soup cooled, then as colours came into existence, as masses were coalesced into form. She watched as said masses collided with each heralding the start of a long decline into entropy.

She watched as the blinding light of stars raced away from each other, as planets were birthed to the stars and as intelligent life was born on to the planets in turn. She watched as life discovered life and as life destroyed life. She watched as life became extinct and as the stars themselves slowly faded away into darkness.

She watched as everything went dark and cold.

Time to start again.