The latest hot-button case had the whole courtroom in an uproar. Never in four billion years of recorded existence (a little mishap with Dragonfire erased the previous ones) did the Judges break character to root for a defendant. Making the rules public was rare but not unheard of. Some Judges liked to push their weight around.
But openly declaring love? Handing out gifts to the Defendants like candy? One would think the multiverse was about to descend into chaos.
And this had happened right after Loki... No. The Court Clerk didn't have the time to keep up with what every Greater God did in their spare time.
Shadowed by the same artifact robes the Judges used, the Court Clerk was a silent and stoic figure in the courthouse. Nobody knew who she was. Very few knew her gender. She'd also checked her personal identifying words at the door when she took the mantle. The neutrality of the job demanded that. She was the Court Clerk, a minor deity, and that was enough.
Some guests of the courthouse were arguing in the corridor. As she approached with silent steps and an aura of authority, they stopped, shut their noise traps, and bowed to her. The only hint she'd noticed was that the hood she wore moved to one side, then the other. Its enchantment shadowed her face and protected it from any attempts to peek under. Inside the Cosmic Courthouse, not even Pantheon Overgods like Tupã or Zeus could discern her features.
Nobody could see her grit her teeth. This was supposed to be the cathedral of order in the Multiverse. And yet...
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Reaching her office, she walked in as the door opened and closed on its own to let her pass. A non-Euclidean library, where distance and geometry mattered little, her office had a few creatures crawling over books, documents, and scrolls, ordering and re-ordering the collection of court records. Mortals who glimpsed at this impossible sight would go insane.
But it was the only way to keep four billion years worth of records close at hand. One would never know when a resurrected Demon God in a distant dimension would reset the Statute of Limitations on their criminal charges, forcing her to bring the whole case back before the Judges. not to mention issuing all the permits for Hero summoning.
Speaking of which, she had that petition blocking a planet in the Milky Way from being targeted by summons. A complaint was lodged a few decades ago that too many youths were being taken by Hero summoning rituals, and an Eastern archipelago nation in that world faced extinction. That motion in limine needed to be fast-tracked or the consequences would be disastrous. It needed to be placed in the judges' docket before a century had elapsed.
That was heinously fast and she knew they'd receive a thousand complaints from all the other worlds whose petitions were pulled back a spot in the line.
The job description for the Court Clerk could as well be "headaches galore".
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Sitting in her desk (yes, in her desk. The whole office was non-Euclidean), she started to review the hot button case. The issues started when the Judges decided to bring the Defendant in a cognition suppression cloak, a lesser version of the one the Court Clerk wore. Why did they need to hide the identity of this particular Defendant?
Then it was cast into Prison Planet _________. (The world is not named... yet. Be the first to name a planet!) That world was basically a cosmic oubliette. Defendants tossed in there were basically lost forever, as the world had its own Wheel of Samsara, and souls sent there were trapped for good. Only a Greater Deity or above could hope to escape the chaotic conceptual dimension rift that surrounded the whole world.
In layman's terms, the planet was inside a white hole that was inside a black hole that was trapped in its own crystallized pocket dimension. Two-way communication was only possible because the Courthouse's special dimensional district was connected to the entire bandwidth of the conceptual dimension at once. The nexus of reality was one of the only two places that didn't have any alternative realities in another conceptual bandwidth. The other was Prison Planet _________.
She paused to remember the day she took the mantle of Court Clerk, all those tens of thousands of years ago. The feeling of having all of one's alternate selves being compressed into one single individual was something she could never remember.
The Court Clerk sighed.
She was reminiscing as a coping mechanism. She really didn't want to deal with this mess. There were high-priority cases that deserved to be dealt with before this recent case but she knew that pushing it aside would only make it worse in the long run. With the Judges issuing ruling after ruling, the stuff would rapidly snowball out of proportion and then she'd have to spend a couple of centuries fixing the mess, instead of just a few days if she did it now. While a few issues would surely be delayed, she was sure the overall gain of efficiency and time savings was worth it.
She went back to the rulings the Judges made right after casting the Defendant into Prison Planet ______.
Or she would have hadn't someone barged into her office. "Honorable Clerk!" The messenger fairy panted. "An urgent notice!"
"What is it?" She asked. The robe also masked her voice.
"A world linked to your priority motion in limine has been destroyed!"
If it was "a world", it wouldn't stop the motion. Worlds got destroyed all the time. If destroying a world was enough to stop a motion in this Courthouse, genocide would be as commonplace as meteoroids flying through space. She replied with a raised eyebrow, though the hood didn't let the fairy see. It did see her straightening her shoulders, though.
"The world known as Earth has suffered Apocalypses in more than 85% of its conceptual bandwidth," the fairy explained. "Several concurrent doomsday prophecies went off one after the other in thousands of alternate Earths. The planet exploded into dust in around 30% of its entire conceptual bandwidth."
That made her get out (yes, out) of her desk.
A world could have several alternate versions spread throughout the conceptual dimension, each with its own bandwidth. It was like putting several copies of a globe side-by-side along a line on a table. Except that the line was the conceptual dimension, and each slice of the table with one copy of the world was the quadridimensional baryonic universe most non-magical people were familiar with. Some slices were wider and more significant than others, while most were almost paper-thin.
The width of each slice was the conceptual bandwidth a particular alternate had. Sometimes events merged two adjacent realities, often seamlessly, while others split causality and caused two slices to appear, each with a fraction of the previous one's bandwidth.
But to lose 85% of its entire bandwidth? Like in all alternate versions of that world at once? It was... She groaned and rubbed her face. Too many "unheard of" events were happening in sequence. While she couldn't pinpoint the causal nexus, she couldn't help but feel they were related.
Perhaps that world suffered an epidemic of apocalypse stories, and that tainted the sentient population's imaginary, causing it to become reality in adjacent alternate versions, which then didn't remain self-contained and collapsed back to the reality that published the fiction. One tested and tried way to avoid thinking of the apocalypse was to stop reading fictional works about the apocalypse. And the conceptual dimension was ruled by thought. Most often, the population was too entranced by the stories to drop the books. And then what was delegated to mere mythology became reality.
On her way to pick up the document the messenger fairy was offering her, the Court Clerk stared at a poster on the wall, depicting a bear with a police cap pointing at you. It read, "Only you can avoid Apocalypse scenarios!" It wasn't there a moment ago, and when she looked away, it vanished. Non-Euclidean offices were a headache, sometimes.
She took the envelope, opened it, and read. Truly enough, 85% of all alternate Earths from the Milky Way's Orion arm had suffered an Apocalypse. She produced a golden token and handed it to the fairy as a tip for its services.
Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.
"Thank you. Dismissed!"
The fairy grinned and ate the golden token. It made a satisfying gormandizing groan and saluted. "Appreciated, ma'am! The cake wasn't a lie!" It cheered then vanished in a poof of glitter.
The goofiness made the Court Clerk chuckle. She was alone and would never do it in public, though. Back in (yeah, in. Leave it) her desk, she took the motion in limine asking to block Hero summoning rituals from taking people from Earth, stamped it with an "Obsolete, immediate archival" stam. She handed the document to one of the creatures working on organizing the court document collection.
One less issue on her docket. She wouldn't need to re-organize the schedule to push that motion ahead of others, anyway. Problem solved! And it only took a few decades. Now, that was efficiency!
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She dozed off for a minute. "Where was I?" She stared at the piles of paper in the desk with her (yeah, the papers were also IN the non-Euclidean desk. Stop trying to make sense out of it). "Oh, right. The rulings on the odd Defendant case."
The Court Clerk pulled the records for that case and started to extract the Court findings. She combined them into categories. She abbreviated "Prison World _____.' with PW_ for brevity.
General Rulings.
1. The Defendant's crime was being Atavistic.
2. Atavism is against their God's rules.
3. The Defendant is condemned to life in PW_.
4. The Mirror shall follow the Defendant at the Court's behest.
5. The main perpetrator shall be summoned before the Judges.
6. Mirror shall display the world's stability rating, written on bathtub fog.
Defendants' rules.
1. Cecilia is a female.
2. Cecilia Loathes bright colors.
3. Cecilia Ages slowly and is already more than a hundred Earth years old.
4. Cecilia Is a clone of a male who is the main perpetrator of the crimes she's accused of.
5. Cecilia's punishment shall be lifted if she manages to eat the heart of a dèfandant (a type of sweet candy slime). It's a creature that lives in the world's dessert[SIC].
6. Cecilia's father will be made aware of mental manipulation due to the Judges' influence.
7. Another daughter of Seth shall be sent to PW_.
8. Cecilia shall grow wings. The process will deepen the knowledge of her own Atavic powers.
9. Cecilia's sister, named Vanessa, will dislike Cecilia.
PW_ traits.
1. Has random weather, which changes every 10 minutes.
2. Has no solid ground, being mostly oceans.
3. A previous Defendant, called Ulfren, dug to the planet's core, triggering an Apocalypse-level event and releasing an ancient evil. That's why the world was locked inside a white hole inside a black hole inside a crystallized pocket dimension.
4. Elemental chaos rules. Even time doesn't flow straight.
5. The magic system is highly subjective, with elements being assigned based on personal belief.
6. The world contains a dessert[SIC] where the light shines constantly.
7. Several condemned criminals live in the world.
8. All creatures have a tracker that counts their age and miles traveled in the world.
9. Visitors to the dessert who don't display proper piety are consumed by it.
10. Creatures earn one special ability for every 1,000 miles traveled.
11. Monsters don't leave a body behind. They drop items and magical desserts. Master bakers and cooks can also create magical desserts.
12. The island the Defendants arrive at is part of an archipelago. The fourth one by size.
13. The items dropped by monsters, along with the desserts may be books that may give extra miles when read. Drops are not always guaranteed.
14. Belief grants energy for enhancement.
15. As creatures accumulate magic, they become more shimmery and colorful.
16. Monsters may, instead of killing, transform people into desserts for 24 hours. Others are tempted to eat the desserts (killing the transformed victims) but lose miles.
17. Calling people after a legume is an insult.
18. Inmates that reach a certain milestone may become either champions or wardens to participate in a hunting game.
19. To become a warden, one must achieve their personal release condition and refuse to depart PW_.
20. PW_ is composed of the dead remains of trillions of previous inmates. Slimes digest the remains and transmute them into useful things. The islands are the shells of long-dead demigod turtles.
21. 1 day after reaching the first milestone (at 1000 miles), creatures are informed they need ten such milestones to unlock the System and earn a Class.
22. PW_ is unstable. Its stability may go from 0% (when the islands are no longer shielded from extreme weather) to 100% (when Mana becomes still and magic ceases to work).
23. Creatures on PW_ have a limit of 5 magical items.
24. PW_ gains miles by rotating around its star. The elemental chaos sometimes spawns sentient magical creatures.
25. Wardens and Champions may forsake their mileage powers for a Class. From then on, they earn levels and Attributes, as well as a new ability every 25 levels. The level cap is 100.
26. Stability grows by 0.005 for every 1000 miles inmates have gained, and lowers by 0.001 for every monster killed by the inmates.
Temporary Rulings & one-time Events.
1. The next batch (and only the next batch) of rulings shall be made public as they happen.
2. The Shield will have a temporary failure, dropping Cecilia right next to the Dragon to continue the fight.
3. Cecilia shall kill the dragon.
4. Cecilia will receive a mental letter from the judges. It will say they love her.
5. Cecilia shall receive a public message from the judges.
6. Shall receive a crate with useful objects upon arrival at PW_.
7. Cecilia's Atavic traits currently mimic a Jaguar.
8. As usual, the inmates in PW_ shall grant her a chunk of Dimensional Clay to make a storage item with.
9. One of the PW_ inmates shall mentor her.
10. The father shall gaslight the Defendant into committing genocide.
11. Cecilia shall become attached to a harmless resident, though her father won't approve of it.
12. Cecilia shall receive a magical pillow that cannot get dirty and changes sizes. The pillow may grow to become a spacious tent filled with more pillows.
13. Cecilia will get a non-combat immortal pet. Her father shall loathe the pet.
14. Seth will be given a magical can of endless compressed air. A dial allows the can to blow from a faint whiff to 300 MPH winds.
15. Seth will be brought back to life when the Dragon kills him.
16. A sealed pocket dimension on the start island shall release an ancient dragon.
17. The dragon will drop a book and a cake. The cake will immolate whoever eats them, recovering any of their wounds and making them genetically perfect.
18. Time accelerates in PW_ relative to the Courthouse dimension.
She finished compiling the list and smiled. There might be some clerical errors here and there, and some open interpretations of the Judges' rulings, but it was all nice and rather concise. The spirit of the rulings if not the letter was preserved. And if the Judges had any problem with that, too bad. Some of the text that was already implied in the rules was omitted. Too late, she noticed she'd messed up the chronological order of the rulings. Too bad.
As the Court Clerk, she was immune to the Judges' powers. They couldn't pass rulings on her or fire her from her job.
With the rulings compiled, she sent the scroll to be copied and archived. As she reviewed her docket for the next task or case, the door opened and another messenger fairy flew in.
"Clerk, ma'am! A new set of Judge rulings has arrived!"
More work. And with the Judges so interested in this Cecilia woman, she expected more and more rulings to file. Until the corpus of rules would fill an entire book.
"Thank you."
She went to take the envelope, then tipped the fairy with another golden token. It ate the token and burst into glitter. The Clerk had no idea what happened to the fairy. She didn't care enough to find out, either. All she knew was that the fairies loved the tokens, and it was always a different fairy every time. Was there a fairy factory or spawning grounds somewhere? One day she would find out.
The Clerk read the new set of rulings.
1. PW_'s shield shall have a partial failure when a wave carrying Cecilia deposits her right next to the Dragon, so their fight may continue.
2. Dragon shall get a box stuck between its teeth. The box is indestructible and contains wax that changes into the material it is applied to.
3. A dark illusionary flame shall spawn, and it will chase the nearest person. When it touches them, they shall feel [REDACTED].
4. Vanessa shall grow a little faster. She shall also regain her previous life's memories.
5. Timmy the Cheesemancer, Lord of the 7 Cheeses, Fountain of Foundue, shall be polymorphed into a défandant and sent to PW_.
6. After reaching 10 abilities, if the choice to become a Champion or Warden is not made, the System shall offer the inhabitants tasks related to their chosen trade to earn more trade-related abilities.
Weird. Though it was unusual, she frowned as she counted only six rulings. Something must be hindering the Judges. She hoped it was not infighting again. The Multiverse would be appalled if they knew the Cosmic Judges had the ability to be petty just like any other sentient being. Anyway, she could be petty too. The Court Clerk filed this new set of rules and then went on to the next item in her very busy schedule.
Earth again. A guy from Florida (she had no idea what was a Florida) was causing trouble in another world, eating all sorts of mythic creatures. The local major deity, called Pathos-something filed a complaint to have him removed. She raised an eyebrow, shoved the petition into a huge pile labeled "Worldwaker issues", and moved on. That petition would take a few centuries to be processed.
The Court Clerk was proud to be so expedite.
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Prison World _____ (still unnamed, wink wink) spun around its star. She was aware that she was trapped inside a white hole, inside a black hole, inside a crystallized pocket dimension. Trillions of souls wailed as they spun on her Wheel of Samsara, waiting to be reincarnated.
A blue box appeared in front of her.
> > You learned the ability —
>
> Another blue box appeared above that one.
>
> > > You learned the ability —
> >
> > Another blue box appeared above that one.
> >
> > > > You learned the ability —
> > >
> > > Another blue box appeared above that one.
> > >
> > > > > You learned the ability —
> > > >
> > > > Another blue box appeared above that one.
> > > >
> > > > > > You learned the ability —
The blue boxes kept appearing over each other, 3,500 a day. One every 24.69 seconds. She had long ago given up on reading and closing all of them. Now they piled up, thousands upon thousands upon millions. What use were these new abilities? None.
Bored, she took some souls from the Wheel and reincarnated them as a new species of mud golems. They spawned over the ocean (not many landmasses to spawn on), fell into the water, and dissolved as they screamed in pain, becoming extinct minutes later.
Their souls went back to the Wheel. The weather changed and it became sunny on the planet for ten minutes. Then the storms were back. For ten minutes. She gained forty-nine new abilities, the windows piling up.
Forever.