Darkness claimed the room. Dim. Cold. Good place to hide; nowhere to run.
Dr. Zavelo looked at his watch, counting down. Fifty-five, fifty-six, fifty-seven…, listing down his thoughts with every tick. Nothing else in this world could stop his doings now. They'd be smart to try, but blind assurance has led him this far, so why change? Can't be too long for them to finally decide on the weapon for his death. Sixty-one, sixty-two… His work will be done, and finally, finally, the gates to angels will be shattered for a while. A short while is all his people would ever need.
Sixty-six, sixty-seven, sixty-eight… The whole world is counting down, and it doesn't even know it. They wouldn't dare, as the world would be daring the likes of gods in the next hour.
Dr. Zavelo did it. Dr. Zavelo, the mute one, Dr. Zavelo, the coward. His name, which rolled off the tongue with every utterance of it, would never be known, but always will be felt. He relished saying his name over and over again, as it will be the last time he would hear it. Zavelo. Zavelo. Like a madman who would mutter himself over and over again, he would call himself repeatedly, pausing only to draw in saliva. His throat was dry, and he had not taken any water since his arrival. It has been two days.
Seventy-three, seventy-four.. Clocks started to run. A thin column of bright green light ran through one of his hands into the ceiling, with which a complex cylinder structure with multiple tubes lining into a concentric circle was affixed. A similar device was the source of the light, and was on the floor. The remains of a dead king's daughter, encased in a pale green crystal, was set in the middle. "Yes," he said, "it's starting. It's finally starti-"
He was caught off-guard by another beam firing. A crackling noise was now audible. Not just to him, but everyone else in the world. The change has begun. Yes, a change. No other word but its simplest form could describe the change that was happening. Liberation was starting, and soon after, a war. Dr. Zavelo muttered again, "War. War. War." The word sounded good. Very good. Never again would he die and expect a race of demons to greet him and take him to Hell. Hell will die. Every higher being will die. No other being will be higher than Man after this.
Four beams. Ninety-nine. Ninety-eight. One hundred. Perfectly on time.
The machine began to flicker. Not just the beams and the cylinders, either. Reality began to flicker, and bend. Dr. Zavelo grabbed on to a railing, laughing mildly hysterically while vomiting. The pain caused by this shift felt like bones breaking, skin breaking, organs being burned. He vomited his liver out, bile, blood and piss collecting themselves onto the floor one moment, and being set into green flames the other. Dr. Zavelo stomped it out, ignoring the fire.
It was glorious. Seven out of eight beams were firing, and he could almost see the dead king's daughter, alive, barely bruised and, most of all, as stunning as the day he killed her. He had done this only for himself, he would not lie, but this was for everyone. To live. Break free. Break everything.
A flash of the brightest light, and a sound that signaled the crash of the universe. The universe was gone. Or, to be specific, Creation's harbingers, gone. But Zavelo could see… Zavelo could hear. Better yet, Zavelo could feel. Zavelo could feel! He looked down at his hands, nothing. He closed his eyes and thought hard. He opened them, and the hands fit for a builder or a miner were his. The hands of a hard-working god that would re-shape a new reality, or rather, overwrite a newly non-existent one. He thought again, and a compact disk, and the cylinder device were in front of him. The front of the device contained a slot for the compact disk.
Dr. Zavelo, only living god and being of a destroyed universe, entered the CD into the slot, and pressed 'Play'.
He arrived. He had skin and his body back. He was soaring through … a passageway of something, covered with some bubbles, some squares, visible heat. Alternate universes, which, despite his thinking, were merely extensions of his God Will to help him cope with the overwriting of a universe. No more broken bones, no more vomit. God <sic>, he hated the vomit.
"No! You weren't supposed to survive! All gods die! They're supposed to DIE!"
He idled past an iteration of his universe. One where he failed, and was killed by -, and eschatological events around the world began happening. One god against another god's enemy, and two Hells joining forces to fight an army of deities with several of his kind caught in between. He shrugged. An irony was that, with all of his genocidal hatred for higher beings, he had done everything to become one. Who would even care, though? He could just send humanity at all the other gods with fury, and, at the moment of their victory, their moment of declaring independence against gods, he would place them under his Word, and society will continue to his Will.
Thoughts of monuments, epics and entire societies bowing to him entered. Is this it, he spoke to himself, is this how gods think?. He doubled-over and laughed, clutching his stomach from the pain of a god's laughter. That's weird, he mused, so… gods could feel pain. Interesting. Once he had sobered himself, Dr. Zavelo continued surging through the wide and expansive corridor of worlds, and tried his best not to laugh.
A light at the end of the tunnel would be poetic. It would mean that Dr. Zavelo would finally appear in his own universe soon, so he waited. Glared ahead, while soaring past universes that should, or would be his. He expected that light until the very end.
Dr. Zavelo paused.
| Studying Godhood |
