We spent an unreasonably long amount of time sitting on the bathroom floor. If the world hadn’t ended, it would have certainly caused delays and gotten a lot of people angry with me. But even if it had, I wouldn’t have cared. I simply didn’t have the strength. How could I, when I’d just learned the nature of the world wasn’t what I’d thought it was?

God hadn’t abandoned us. There was a piece of the Godhead sitting in my lap.

I’d calmed down, somewhat, though the calm was only skin deep—or should I say, scales-deep?

I sighed.

Andalon looked up at me. “Why is it so imporptant that there’s lotsa Shiny Guys?” she asked. “Why does it make you so sad?”

I took a deep breath. I could taste the sweet tang of spores on my lips.

How to explain it?

“My people,” I said, “we think the Angel—the Shiny Guy—is in control of everything. Nothing happens without Him knowing about it.”

Her eyes widened. “Does that mean he’s the reason for the fungus?”

I nodded. “And for what happened to my son, and for what happened to Ileene, and for what happened to Frank, and Merritt, and you and me.”

“But why is it imporptant that there’s just one Shiny Guy?” she asked.

“Because…” I huffed, pursing my lips, “that’s part of what makes Him special. If the Angel is the only one in charge, it means He gets to make the rules. He gets to say what’s good and what’s evil. And He has to be One. Otherwise… He isn’t perfect, and if He isn’t perfect, then He’s no better than any of us, and a lot of people feel it wouldn’t be worth their time to worship something that wasn’t perfect.”

This was different from having my shelf break. This was the floor disappearing beneath my feet and dropping me into the abyss.

“And now,” I continued, “you’ve told me there are more of Him. More Shiny Guys.” I gulped again. “If that’s the case… who gets the blame for all the bad things in the world? Who’s at fault? Who can I turn to to ask to make things right?”

Andalon shook her head. “I’m sorry, Mr. Genneth. I didn’t mean to—”

“—It’s not your fault, Andalon.” I sighed. “We don’t know what we don’t know.” My lips trembled as I smiled. “I might not have the Angel anymore,” I said, “but…” I ran my claws through her silky, blue hair, “at least I have you. At least I’m not alone.”

“It’s not fun, being alone,” she said.

I nodded. “You can say that again…”

“It’s not fun, being alone,” she said.

I chuckled at that, but only for a moment.

I let out a long, sporey sigh.

“How are we going to break this to the others?” I asked.

“Whaddya mean?”

“I’m a non-believer, and learning that there was more than one Angel nearly broke me. What do you think will happen if I tell the others? People like Yuth, or Suisei? People who really do believe?”

“More… breaking?” There was trepidation in her answer.

“Yep.” I nodded, only to then groan. “Fudge…” I clenched my claws. “Why do I have to deal with this? I already have enough on my plate! I’m behind on my transformation, I’m behind on my psychokinesis.” I threw up a claw. “I’m probably behind on my mind-world powers, too.”

“Maybe you can helps more ghosts?” Andalon suggested.

“Not like this.” I shook my head. “If anything, I’m the one who needs therapy.”

“Maybe you should talk to Greggy again. You were happy when you were with him. I remember.”

“That…”

Huh.

“That’s a good idea,” I said.

I needed a break. Before, that would have meant shirking my duties, either by playing hooky here in meat-space or by putting a decoupled doppelgenneth in charge of my body while I retreated into my mind-space. But with the ability to alter the speed of my thoughts, I could have my mind-space break in the blink of an eye, and then get back to work feeling refreshed, distracted from the highly inconvenient truth that God was, apparently, not quite God after all.

Was the Angel still divine? Would Lassedicy need to become polytheistic?

“No,” I muttered. I stopped that train of thought before it left the station.

If I wasn’t careful, I’d spend my break obsessing over theological conundrums.

I raised myself off the floor with a psychokinetic helping hand.

It was time to go pester Greg, and hopefully figure out how to get my mind off of the disunity of God.

— — —

It wasn’t easy to get Greg’s attention, at least not until I discovered that Andalon could interfere with his mind-world by phasing her fingers into him and wriggling them around. That knocked Greg out of his trance-like state long enough for me to voice my request.

“I want to do what you’re doing,” I said.

“Specifically?” he ‘said’—his console was speaking aloud the words he typed into them with his powers.

“Making a world,” I replied. I thought back to my previous attempt.

Clock-mangrove world.

“I, uh… I think I’ve been both overthinking it and under thinking it, and could use some help with getting started.”

“I sense your Wa has been disturbed.”

“Yes.” I nodded. “Yes it has.”

“Perfect.” He clapped his claws together. “I’ve been working on a gooey, and I wanna see if it works as well for other transformees as it has for me.”

“A gooey?” I asked.

Greg rolled his golden eyes and let out an aggravated snort. “Stupid autocorrect. I meant Graphical User Interface; GUI, for short, and GUI—but pronounced ‘gooey’—for even shorter.”

“Huh?”

“You’ll see,” he said. He raised his ‘hand’ at his side, palm facing out, in a twisted parody of maneki-neko’s lucky paw.

I stared at his claws. “You want me to—”

“—Yes,” he said, “after you.”

Air hissed as I removed one of my hazmat suit’s gloves. The wriggle-tingling didn’t start until several seconds after I’d grabbed hold of Greg’s dry, minutely scaled flesh.

“You have to trigger the physical link,” he said. “It doesn’t just… happen.”

By the time I’d nodded in understanding, Andalon and I were somewhere completely different. One moment, it was the two of us—him coiled on the floor by the reception desk, me standing beside him. The next thing I knew, I was, well… it was very fanciful, let me put it that way.

Exhibit A: sky whales soared up above, borne on feathered wings.

“Welcome to my study,” he said, taking a bow.

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Much like with our voxel adventure on the night before, it took a little while to get myself properly oriented, so, I’ll just skip through all the introductory business and get to the meat of things.

Greg and I sat in plain chairs on opposite sides of a small table of purest driftwood, its smooth surface drained of color. Corrugations along the wood grain bit into my palms as I rested my hands atop the table, in the shade of a stoa court. Climbing plants of living gold entwined around the fluted, marble columns at the stoa’s edge. Sunlight wafted in through the leaves, covering the table and the mosaic-tiled floor in a collage of light and dark. The columns supported the roof of a massive temple, in the ancient Benundi style. The peoples of ancient Benun had been known to hold lectures and debates in the stoas of their temples.

Not even a full restoration of the Temple of the Cerulean Mysteries would have rivaled the acropolis Greg had built for himself inside his mind.

I wondered what they’d have thought of the lecture Greg had been giving me.

“So, after doing some experiments with Dr. Finster, I was able to confirm that, yes, us wyrms have both LAN and Wi-Fi.” Greg smiled again, and then waved his lower pair of arms dismissively.

Yes, he had four.

“I kid, I kid—well, not entirely. Right now, our minds are directly linked because our bodies are doing weird fungus physical contact stuff out in Thick World. That’s the LAN method—local area network.”

“And the Wi-Fi?” I asked.

“That’s the crazy part,” he said. “It’s sound.”

Greg rested his lower pair of arms on the table, propping them by his elbows. Of his upper pair, the hand that he wasn’t using for gestures held a half-eaten piece of pita bread.

He took another bite out of the bread.

As for me, I was my usual self, dressed for work, all prim and proper—human, head to toe. Greg had informed me that I could have been a pangolin had I so desired, but I chose not to. A pangolin wouldn’t have been able to sit in the chair, and I didn’t feel like asking Greg to accommodate what little remained of my sense of whimsy. I felt I was already imposing myself enough on him, as is.

Greg, meanwhile, wore a stately toga, made from a fabric the color of bronze that shined in the sunlight, just like the metal. I noticed the strong Benundi theming of his creation. First the pillars and columns, then the togas. He even had the characteristic deep blue sash worn by Benundi royalty, past and present—running down his chest. Other than the extra pair of arms and a tremendous physique—take human Larry and add an extra foot of height—his appearance was a perfect match for the image of his former human self on his staff profile on the WeElMed app.

“I’m sure you’ve heard how transformee’s voices start to change,” Greg explained, “and you’ve no doubt seen those golden orbs that we have in place of human eyes.”

“It’s kind of hard to miss,” I said, with a nod.

“They’re a real trip; you’ll understand when you get them. You can see the fricken’ soundwaves, Genneth.” Yet again, Greg grinned.

“I’m worried that you’re enjoying this too much,” I said.

“Oh, I definitely am,” he replied. “Anyhow, as it turns out, we can make all sorts of sounds once our voices have changed.”

“I’ve noticed,” I said.

“Whoever or whatever was responsible for the wyrms must have had woodwind instruments on the brain—ocarinas, flutes, that sort of thing,” he said.

“I play the clarinet…” (I was trying my best to contribute to the conversation. I don’t think it was working.)

“Nice.” Greg paused for a moment, and then continued. “Anyhow… the data… we can sing it. You need wyrm eyes to ‘hear’ it, and a wyrm head—well, wyrm throat—to sing it, but, once you do, you can use those brand new organs to send or receive data. Any data you want!”

“The self-help group theorized that was the case,” I said.

“The SHG is behind the curve. They could be building empires by now—and not just building them, but sharing them.” At that last point, he grinned. “I don’t know if wyrms have a language, but the data-sharing thing is fucking sweet. I’ve actually been waiting for more transformees to get further along in their changes, because I’ve got an itch to experiment with this. Can we enter each others’ heads by singing in concert, actively streaming the data between one another? Imagine it: MMWMRPGs—massively multiplayer wyrm mind role playing games; riding high on each other’s Thin Worlds as easily as you might access an online server! You could have solo play, or co-op.” He tapped his fingers excitedly. “Imagine the co-op!”

Not gonna lie: that did sound fun—very fun—and I told Greg as much. And if the quality was anything like what he’d done here with his study, it might actually be enough to make people want to turn into wyrms.

Greg had built his study atop the largest waterfall I’d ever seen. The massive curtain of water spilled down from the tops of cliffs arranged in a perfect circle, nearly a mile in diameter. The cliffs had been dug out from a stony plateau abutting a sparkling sea. The temple that was Greg’s study sat on a rocky outcrop in the middle of the cliffs, splitting the mighty waterfall to either side. Opposite the temple, a narrow straight cut through the ring and the plateau, forming a clear path to the sea. The churning waters shrouded the ring’s hollow center in luminous mist, through which I could see glimpses of things crystalline and aquamarine.

It was hard not to gape at it. Andalon was stuck in a state of perpetual “Wow”-ness, leaning against a wall as she stared at our surroundings, drunk with wonder. Sometimes she’d pull away from the wall, and giggling, would prance about, chasing crystal butterflies, or jumping and shouting, trying to get the sky whales’ attention. Then, every once in a while, she’d come over and interrupt, asking Greg to explain the marvels he’d made. Andalon’s first question had come only seconds after our arrival, triggered by the sight of the sky whales soaring over the plateau’s purple-leaved jungles. Pterodactyl colonies encrusted themselves in the depths of the sky whales’ fur, where, as Greg had so courteously explained, they fed upon the algae that, thanks to the humid climate, grew on the whale fur.

As if on cue, a sky whale passed overhead, bellowing its ethereal song. The wind left in the leviathan’s wake rustled through the jungle trees as they fell under the creature’s shadow. The wind carried an odd, musty smell, which resulted in an interesting and not unpleasant mix with the limeade scent coming off the grand waterfalls’ mist and spray.

Greg pointed up with a finger. “That’s the smell of the algae in their fur,” he said, beaming with pride. “The mustiness, not the limeade,” he added, just to clarify.

“You’ve done an incredible job,” I said.

“Thank you.” He bowed graciously. “So…” he said, pyramiding the fingers of both pairs of his hands, “you said you wanted to do what I was doing. Well, now that you’ve seen what I’ve been doing—well, a part of it—do you still want to continue?”

“Yes.” I pursed my lips. “To tell you the truth, having just learned about slo-mo, I’m looking for a project to work on to give me something to distract myself from…” My voice trailed off.

“The shit-show,” Greg proffered.

“Yeah…” I sighed. “But, like I said, I’ve been having some trouble with it, and I’m pretty sure I’ll have more trouble if I try again. Sure, I can make little things—a haunted house, a personal office, or recreating things from ghosts’ memories—and I like to think I’ve gotten pretty good at that, but, when it comes to large scale creation… it’s just overwhelming. It would be overwhelming even if I wasn’t terminally indecisive, but I am, so… yeah…”

I sighed again.

Greg nodded. “In the beginning,” he said, “I’d tried to create a world—in my mind—and it hadn’t gone as well as I’d hoped. Realism—even fantastical realism,” he gestured at his surroundings with his lower pair of arms, “is a lot more complicated than it might look at first glance. For example, it hadn’t occurred to me that, a priori, there was no reason for why matter didn’t spontaneously explode, or why heating solids—in the correct conditions—eventually turned them into liquids. When you’re making a world, you have to take these kinds of details into account, not to mention everything else.”

I nodded in understanding.

“So,” I asked, “how did you, uh, deal with all that?”

“I just ignored it.”

“Huh?” I said.

Greg grinned. “It’s like they say: if you can’t take the heat, stay out of the kitchen.” He leaned forward on the table.“I don’t know what kind of freaky-deaky ascendant superintelligence BS the future has in store for us,” he said, with a wave of a hand, “but, as we are now, reality has just too much detail per cubic femtometer for us to be able to hold it all in our minds when we try to make shit up from scratch.”

“Yes,” I said. “So: what did you do to get around it?”

Greg grinned again. “Half of it was cheating, the other half was macros. I fucking love macros.”

“Enlighten me.”

“Trying to do it all at once, from scratch, is a recipe for disaster. Instead, what you want to do is copy-paste from what you already know. Creativity isn’t in the pieces, it’s in how you use them. You know how our memories are beyond photographic now?”

“Yeah?” I said.

Rising from his seat, Greg started pacing across the temple’s mosaic-tiled floors.

“I went and memorized the entire source code for Super Gerbil World,” he explained. “Instead of trying to make physics from the ground up, I just made a reality where logic gates were metaphysically possible. That was a cinch.” He moved as he spoke, though slowly, and gracefully. “Then I made a programming system and inputted the SGW code. The rest was macros and tweaking, and then more macros—oh, and the user interface. The user interface was essential.”

“That’s… very impressive,” I said. “And it sounds like it was a lot of work.”

“And it was. But…”

With a smirk, Greg approached the table and grabbed the back of his chair with all four of his arms and leaned forward. Given that he was currently seven-foot-five, this was rather imposing.

“Now that I’ve made my little system,” he continued, “I can share it with everyone else. I can share it with you, even.”

“And that’s what you want me to try out?”

“Yep.” Greg nodded. “It should make life a helluva lot easier for ya, not to mention giving you a project you can really sink your teeth into.”

“That sounds perfect…” I said, with definite—though measured—excitement.

“I should mention that the interface and implementation structures have changed since last we met—I based them off what we’d been doing—but you should be able to catch up on the changes in no time. Besides, everything you could want to know is contained in the User’s Manual I wrote. It even covers modding! You just sign into your Main Menu, and take it from there.”

“May I hug you?” I asked him. I was being tongue-in-cheek, but only a little. I suppose I could have eventually figured out a practical way of playing god—creating the earth, the sea, and the sky, and all that—but, having Greg’s work to use as a foundation would be invaluable. It took care of nearly all the worries I had that weren’t about ways in which I’d make things more difficult for myself.

Greg stuck all four of his palms out at me. “No,” he said, shaking his head, and vigorously. “But, I appreciate the thought,” he added. “Anyhow, are you ready for the data transfer?”

He steepled both pairs of his fingers.

“Uh… what’s this going to entail?” I asked. “Can you ‘sing’ it to me?”

Greg laughed, then shook his head. “How romantic of you, but, no, I can’t. Your brain and body aren’t developed enough to handle that. So, we’ll have to do it using the bio-link. So,” he said, “are you ready?”

I glanced over at Andalon, who was leaning over the wall, again, this time shouting at the waves far below.

“I’m as ready as I’ll ever be, I guess.”

“Alright!”

Greg walked up to me and placed his lower pair of hands on my shoulders, while making arcane gestures with his upper pair, chanting what I was pretty sure was just performative gibberish. “Now,” he said, “stay still. Stay very, very still…”