"YEOUCH!"

 

Ryan started sucking on his thumb and rested the urge to throw the wooden hammer across the room.

 

Charity looked up, "You need help?" Ryan sighed, "No." He eyed the hand carved tool in his hand , "You sure the book says this has to all be hand crafted?" She nodded and glanced at the book before holding it up for Ryan to see, "Apparently exact dimensions are important as well as the prayers spoken over the tools as they are crafted.”

 

Ryan shook his head as he rolled his eyes, "G'dangit! Why can't there be an Ikea shrine where I just mail order it and then put it together with one of those hexagonal L wrenches that nobody ever uses for anything else other than putting together Ikea crap."

 

Charity ground her teeth for a moment then muttered, "Some day you are going to talk normally for an entire day and the shock will most likely kill me." Ryan lifted up the hammer and placed it on the display hooks on the ritual cabinet. He turned to Charity and asked, "Okay. What's next?"

 

A booming voice filled Ryan's head, "CLOSE ENOUGH."

 

Ryan turned back and noticed everything was gone. He was in a wide open white space devoid of everything except for a rather big dwarf. One might say he was a giant of a dwarf. Certainly an impressive looking dwarf with gravitas. He had a rolling white beard and mighty armor made of the finest of metals and intricate designs. He was actually giving off a glow from the inlays of his armor and from the nimbus like aura that hovered about his head.

 

Ryan shielded his eyes and let out a low whistle, "All-Father, I presume."

 

"Indeed." The voice was softer and more of a more conversational tone then the initial introduction.

 

Ryan slowly stood up, noticing that the shrine he was building did not come with himl. He looked up at the god of creation and said, "I just got to say, I love the pimp-tastic outfit."

 

"Pimp... tastic.” The all-father spoke without emotion or reaction.

 

Ryan nodded, "It's a compliment."

 

"One should hope."

 

Ryan looked about in the ever growing awkward silence, trying to avoid making more small talk. Finally he cleared his throat, "You said make a shrine to you and pray. I assume that was so you could bring me here because… you need to chat?"

 

"Why didn't you contact me before?

 

"Why would I? In fact, why am I talking to you now?

 

"I am the one who sponsored you."

 

Ryan let out a long ‘Ooohhh’ sound and nodded slightly, "That’s news to me. Do you know you never told me your name? It's been rather awkward just running around, telling people, 'I'm on a mission from the gods.' When I can't even say which one? I've been faking it in hopes I'm making it."

 

The god narrowed his eyes, "You honestly didn't know who I was?" Ryan pointed at himself, "Not of this universe? Others might figure you out with a glance but I'm making this up as I go along." He scratched the back of his head, “And not to whine, but one of you was trying to kill me while I was surrounded by swirling purplish fog."

 

The All-Father slowly stroked his beard, "I see. That explains much. Your activities have been... odd. You have been lying about a number of things. Things you didn’t need to lie about, either. I wasn't sure what your game was." Ryan shrugged, "Like I said, fake it until I make it. Look. You're here now. Let's get past this and move onto more important things. I got some positive karmic balance to increase."

 

The All-Father sighed and slowly sat back into a large golden throne of a chair, "I am more concerned with the growing problem then your personal goals and desires. Just understand they happen to match up with ours. Still..."

 

There was a flash and Ryan was floating in a story void. He could still hear the All-father speaking, "Normally we dumb this sort of thing down quite a bit. We explain things in a simplistic manner in hopes that keeping it such makes it easier for you and yours to understand." Ryan thought more aloud than actually spoke, "Humans?"

 

"No. Souls from Earth." A deep feeling of regret washed over the area, "I was against this, but we are desperate at this point. I feel that-" A pause, "Never mind. My moral quandaries are unimportant. I shall simply explain things and you can make your own choices." He started to roll his hand in the air and the environment began to swirl, “I will have to be brief. Your shrine is less than ideal and easily detected. Also, it doesn’t have much energy in it, so there will be quite the backlash.” It seemed like the night sky was fading into existence all around them.

 

The view started to zoom in on random 'stars', only to reveal each one was a sphere with a solar system, or entire galaxy, or just a single planet. Usually the planets were round, but occasionally flat, sometimes other shapes. At first Ryan couldn't understand if there was a pattern, but slowly things started to add up. A pattern started to gnaw at the back of his mind.

 

"The battle has been going on for so long, we don't even know who started it. Suffice to say it is a battle between the holy and unholy, but that isn't accurate. You have to understand the nature of life. Life creates mana, which your world calls memes. Mana tends to come in two... flavors. Positive and negative, but that's not really a moral judgement. Negative is by far more destructive, but it is also a force for change. Positive is far better at healing and building, but it also leads to stagnation. It might be better to call them order and chaos, but that isn't correct either." The all-father's voice drifted over Ryan as he observed the unfolding spectacle.

 

The view pulled out and Ryan could finally understand the  pattern. Channels of parallel universes unfolded before him. Rivers of light flowing through the void like fingers, reaching out, touching and combining. The all-father continued, "For many eons, the war has been in flux, but balanced. The war had a sense of equilibrium. Positive mana based life, humans for example, would battle negative mana based life, demons. Over all, no one side could achieve dominance... that is until recently."

 

The view shifted to an earth, it resembled the world Ryan knew, but could be another.

 

“No one knows what happened. Did the god of your world leave? Did he die? Who knows, but with no one in charge of your universe, it drifted into the dark matter shoals." The view pulled back to show a movie projector showing an image of an apple on a large movie screen, "You see, what you think of 'real' is actually just a projection onto the backdrop of the universe. The further away the screen is from the, hrmmm... let’s just call it the projector. At the lens itself is pure objective reality, but this is just the raw information. It cannot interact with itself at the lens. It has to be projected onto a… surface. Although it has far more dimensions than a two dimensional movie screen.” All-Father walked up to the image on the screen, “The further you get from the projector, the more fuzzy the projection becomes. This lack of resolution creates uncertainty.”

 

“Life cannot live in pure objectivity. It requires the interaction and uncertainty of projection to exist.”

 

Ryan spoke up, "What? Wait... there is an objective universe. Right?" The all-father chuckled, "Yes. But LIFE exists in uncertainty. Your view of the universe is subjective. Life REQUIRES this uncertainty. I believe you called it, 'The resolution of reality’.. The lower the resolution, the more... err... wiggle room? I suppose that  is the term I am looking for."

 

"Life produces positive and negative mana by existing, which creates a feedback loop. This creates the ebb and flow of the universe." A giant hand reached out and intercepted the projection. On the hand appeared the apple, but much smaller. The All-Father brought his hand slowly closer to the projector. As it closed in, the apple on his hand got smaller and smaller, "So what happens if something comes between the screen and the projector?"

 

Ryan examined the screen and then the hand. "The... projection doesn't know it's smaller, but the resolution improves, so... magic becomes weaker... and life is more difficult to sustain."

 

"I knew you were a smart one." The view shifted back to low earth orbit over Japan, "Your earth is unique, in that it has been, very slowly, crashing into the dark matter shoals. Dark matter is like my hand. It brings about increased resolution."

 

"And kills off magic." Ryan contemplated.

 

"Indeed. But usually when this happens, it's so fast that life in the universe cannot adjust. Magic vanishes too quickly and life withers and dies. Your world slowly, over thousands of years, has been going into the dark matter shoals and life has somehow survived." Everything dropped away and they were standing on the top of a windswept mountain.

 

"Like someone living at a high elevation their entire life, their body adapts to low oxygen conditions. So too did the souls of your world adapt to the conditions of dying magic. If the average soul in your average universe is considered a one. On a logarithmic scale, the majority of souls in your world is about five." Ryan’s eyebrows furrowed. The all-father clarified, “That would make a random person from your world approximately ten thousand times stronger spiritually than a random person from anywhere else in the multiverse.”

 

Ryan was about to speak when they flew up into low earth orbit. There were two flashes of light in quick succession over on at a nearby landmass, "At the end of what you called world war two, two nuclear weapons sent over two hundred and forty thousand souls into the afterlife in the single largest acts of mass murder in your planet’s history. There have been events that killed more people, but not in the same instant. That many souls passing on within mere moments of each other, quite literally EXPLODED the Dark matter shoal your world was in, causing a massive fissure that has snaked its way-" At this point the information became rather garbled.

 

Ryan mentally put a finger in his ear and wiggled it around, "Sorry. You lost me."

 

The all-father paused and blinked slowly, "Sorry. I guess the concepts are too complicated. Suffice to say, your world announced its presence to the multiverse in a big way. More importantly, your planet was teaming with humans. Billions."

 

He held out his hands with two worlds in it. One looked like earth, the other looked like it was covered in a single city.. A true Ecumenopolis which he held out to Ryan, “This world has 20 billion souls on it. It is one of the largest worlds we know. In terms of spiritual energy, if we gave it a numerical value we could estimate it to be a total of Five hundred billion.” He then held out the Earth, “This is at least one quadrillion. That’s just a rough estimate. It could be ten, maybe even a hundred times as much. We don’t know.”

 

The image changed and showed flickering flows of light as they pulled up and away to see the Earth at a distance. It looked like a supernova was leaking out of a crack that was hundreds of miles along. The jagged crack bisected Japan and sub-fissures branched off it at random, "Thousands of years of untapped mana, just POURING out of it. Mana flavored and controlled by the people who live there. They might not be able to use magic individually, but get ten million people together to read the same story-"

 

Ryan interrupted, "Or playing the same video game..."

 

"Exactly. We, as gods, can harness that mana and... make a universe out of it. Basically. There are limits. We are constrained by the... ummm... how do I explain? Architecture? Formatting? Plot? We have a specific word for it, but no real translation into a concept of only three dimensions."

 

Ryan waved a mental hand around, "No no... I'm getting it. We make the blueprint and supply the building materials. It's like a lego set. Sure, you can make whatever you want, but it only REALLY goes together the way it was intended."

 

"Not... quite, but close enough. Here's the problem. That much mana unleashed at the same time, it's disrupted the ebb and flow of the war. It's no longer a stalemate. Now it might be possible for one side to win."

 

"Wait... wouldn't that result in both sides losing? Don't they need each other?" Ryan was looking increasingly distraught by this conversation.

 

"Yes. Alas, the moderates are not in control of either side. Regardless, we need to fight. There is a massive push to make their way up... err... this... path? To your world. The battle has been raging for quite a while in a number of nearby universe clusters. However, the demons are trying to cut through a weakness in the local dark matter shoal to bring in reinforcements. We are here to prevent that.”

 

Ryan was quiet for a while, "Wait. Let me get this straight. You built an entire universe just to prevent an enemy army from outflanking you?"

 

"I suppose... yes."

 

"JUST WHAT FUCKIN' APOCALYPTIC SCALE IS THIS GOD DAMN WAR THAT YOU MAKE A UNIVERSE JUST TO CUT SOMEONE OFF???

 

There was a long period of silence before the All-Father spoke, "Are you done with your little tantrum?"

 

Ryan looked like he was going to yell some more, but then hung his head in defeat, "I guess. Yeah."

 

"You are correct. This is an apocalyptic war on a scale your mind cannot comprehend, especially since you can only see in so few dimensions. Here's the problem. We tapped into your world and hired local contractors to find a powerful soul in your world to be the leader of our armies here. We as gods, cannot FIT in the universe you are currently in. Even the briefest of touches could cause vast devastation.” He gestured to a top down view of where Ryan’s workshop was. Overhead was an ever increasing chaotic swill of some formless, colorless energy, “Even this conversation is causing a disruption, but frankly we do not have the time waste anymore. We cannot DESTROY the universe, because the demon armies will just march into the wreckage and take over."

 

"Ryan... You were not the one we sent for, but you came along anyways. We-" Everything grew fuzzy, "My time is brief. We will speak again later. Suffice to say, the demons are pulling out all the stops. We don't know if-" Things went fuzzy, "We need to hold the line. Not just for our sake, but your world as well-" More fuzz, "-get stronger we'll-"

 

----

 

Ryan was back with Charity in his workshop. It seemed like from her point of view, nothing happened at all. She was about to speak when there was a gigantic BOOM of thunder. They both went to the window and with no preamble, there were nothing but sheets of rain coming down from a formerly empty night sky. Lightning strikes could be seen in the distance, hitting one after another in quick succession. Repeated waves of thunder rolled over the area for several minutes before it settled down to a much more reasonable and 'normal'  thunderstorm.

 

Charity and Ryan said nothing while they watched the display for several minutes. Not only because they were in awe of the energy unleashed, but because it was too loud to even attempt a conversation. Neither could shake the feeling that what they were seeing was totally unnatural. When things finally calmed down to the point they could speak without shouting, Ryan was the first to say anything, "So I talked to the All-father." Charity turned to look at him, quite shocked as he continued, "He explained what was at stake."

 

Ryan stared out the window while Charity stared at him. Finally she asked, "Do I want to know?" Ryan shook his head. She looked out at the rain as it lashed against the window, "Well... I'm going to ask all the same." She looked at him out of the corner of her eye, "What's at stake?"

 

At that moment a bolt of lightning struck nearby. The flash lit up Ryan's face and for a moment, she swore she could see inside him, see some sort of coiled horrible creature lurking just beneath the skin. It was for only a moment and then the vision was gone. As the noise rolled away Ryan turned to Charity and said but one word.

"Everything."