Chapter 56: Book 2 – Prologue

The Dark World

 

There were many worlds over the eons that had been called that name. Of those there were few that could honestly be said to have earned the moniker. However, recently there was one world in particular that had not only earned that name, but was almost universally accepted as the one and only Dark World.

 

A particular large chunk of rock called Earth, third major celestial body from its primary.

 

The humans living on that dirt ball didn't even know they had attracted any  attention in recent times. A mere blink of an eye by the standards of some. Time is a rather fungible commodity and far more subjective than most biological life forms understand. Only true, pure, memetic life forms of sufficient size and power can truly fathom the fundamental nature of hyper-dimensionality.

 

The most common of these beings are called simply 'Gods'.

 

Of course the term wasn't accurate. Biological life rarely managed to be 'accurate' when it came to communication of any sort, as far as pure memetic life was concerned. Communication with such creatures was always complicated and fraught with danger. Misunderstandings were the least of the problems that could arise. Imagine trying to have a conversation with a self-aware and intelligent microbe without accidentally killing it and you'll get the scale of the problem. Which is to say, biological life isn't insignificant. True, one single algae isn't that important, but if all the algae on your world were to perish, there are few multi-cellular life forms that would survive the ecological collapse.

 

That includes most of you, by the way.

 

That is how gods view most intelligent life forms. They are the very algae that form the bedrock of memetic existence. Without intelligent life, there are no ideas, no concepts, no stories, no FAITH. The very 'air' that Gods breathe depends on the existence of intelligent life. This is the odd relationship between gods and men. Gods need men, but men don't need gods. The existence of intelligent life creates memetic energy. Magic, if you will.

 

Which brings us back to the godless and forsaken 'Dark World'.

 

Did that world ever have a god? It wasn't clear. It most likely did at one point, but that god either died or abandoned it. In the vast intricate structures that make up hyper-dimensionality, there are tendrils and rivers of existence that snake and wind themselves through the dark matter reefs. Dark matter is a type of matter that normal matter cannot interact with because it is the very bedrock of reality. The density of dark matter effects the amount of 'CLARITY' you experienced in a given section of space.

 

Big ships need deep water to safely float. Get too close to shore and you might run a ground. One needs to be mindful of that because if a given area has a massive build up of coral, you might not know you are about to run aground. Sometimes the dark matter breaks off and floats about like massive icebergs. An Iceberg that can turn a planet into a version of the Titanic. Life creates magic. Magic permits the existence of life. Magic works best in ‘deep water’. The fuzzier your reality, the easier it is to create, use, and manipulate magic. Dark matter removes uncertainty. Magic cannot exist without uncertainty. Life does not exist without magic.

 

Dark matter is the enemy of life.

 

Occasionally a world or universe, or only part of one, will wander too close to the dark matter reefs. When this happens, magic dies and life follows suit. The more fantastical creatures perish first, then intelligent life, eventually all life just dies. Higher life usually abandons such a world, if it can, as it is near impossible to change the ebb and flow of eternity. In the case of The Dark World, it wasn't that sudden. Its path was at a very shallow angle and it took thousands of years to completely fall into the nearby dark matter reef. However, eventually it was still swallowed up and it was never to be seen again.

 

Until recently, that is.

 

Humans, who live on mountaintops, over generations adapt to the environment. They have larger lungs and more red blood cells. The same thing happens to people who live in deserts, or above the Arctic Circle. A similar thing happened on Dark World. Over thousands of years every single creature that was on that planet became spiritually stronger. Humans with weak souls died out and only the strongest of souls remained. Trapped within the dark world and unable to reincarnate anywhere else, these souls kept getting recycled over and over. This form of natural selection turned ordinary men into spiritual beasts. They may not have understood their lot in life, but they were like nomadic tribes wandering an endless desert, unknowingly passing from oasis to oasis in an attempt to survive.

 

Until World War Two.

 

Two nuclear bombs dropped and about a quarter of a million souls met their end. Never before has so many died in one spot in such a short amount of time. The first bomb poked a hole in eternity. The second widened the crack and shattered the astral firmament itself. A rift was born and it announced itself to the wider audience with a BANG. A blazing beacon of energy never before witnessed, lanced out from the dark matter reef in which the dark world was trapped. It lit up the hyper-dimensional skies like a spiritual supernova.

 

It was a world with billions of people, each one possessing a soul thousands of times stronger than the typical soul found in any other universe. It was a universe brimming with ideas and thoughts and memetic energy the likes of which the rest of the universe could only imagine. It was a world with no magic, powered by strange and unknown sciences and technology that few gods ever dreamed were possible. There were multiple civilizations, teaming with humans, living in an impossible place.

 

One god in particular was interested in figuring out HOW the humans survived, so he started doing some experiments. Nearby he started making some pocket universes. They were nowhere near as strong or powerful as The Dark World, but these were just thought experiments, basically. He had a surplus of energy. Making a tiny pocket world or twelve was no big deal. They wouldn’t last long anyways. He set them up, let them run, and watched what happened. He never expected a mirror universe to have resonance with The Dark World. Memetic energy that was compatible leaked out and was drawn to one particular experiment.

 

It became self-sustaining.

 

The other gods noticed this, they ran a few tests themselves and determined that while it was suicide to enter the dark world for any pure memetic being, it was possible to tap into those vast reserves from the outside. To put this in perspective, imagine that a rock composed of pure WISHES the size of Walla Walla, Washington dropped in the middle of Antarctica. What would the various governments of our world do to get that rock?

 

Yeah. Like that, but SO MUCH WORSE.

 

Everyone and their mother, faction upon faction were clambering over each other to get to The Dark World. This seemingly endless wellspring of energy could shatter the balance of power through out reality. When souls started accidentally falling out of the rift, the situation got even worse. Biological beings on other worlds got wind of what was going on and someone came up with the hero summoning spell. This ritual reached out and snatched souls from earth, usually ones closest to the rift, and pulled them to the summoner. These 'earthlings' as they called themselves were often weak to start, but give them time in a universe with ANY level of memetic energy and they became magic sponges.

 

It was like taking a Kryptonian and dropping them in a yellow sun.

 

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The faction that controlled the area around the Dark World declared a truce and came together. They called themselves THE ALLIANCE and claimed to be the stewards to the Dark world and they would manage it for the good of all.

 

The ‘All’ they claimed to be managing it for called ‘Bullshit’ and promptly declared war.

 

Battle lines were drawn. It was the alliance against the rest of the cosmos and they intended to win. Of course direct control of the planet was impossible, so protocols were set up. Mortals who were strong enough to survive in there were found and sent in as agents. ‘Angels’ were assigned in legions to watch the area surrounding the rift both to protect it as well as prevent anyone in the alliance from 'Getting Grabby With The Goods'.

 

Which put our original experimenter in a bad spot.

 

It took some serious politicking to not get the hyper-dimensional version of a shiv shoved in a particularly vital section of his personage. He was 'asked' to donate many of his servants to fight on the front line. As compensation for his 'contribution', he was permitted to retain control of his mirror universe. Officially he was in charge of researching the dark world. Unofficially, he was in too strong a position to be rid of easily, so they hamstrung him and told him not to get any ideas.

 

The god wouldn't mind so much if he hadn't come to like his experiment so much. The people on his 'non-magical' world fascinated him. He tried very hard to take care of them. In particular he wanted to know if he could fix gender imbalances. A world where women were pushed to excel and men were encouraged to hold back. His goal was to promote equality of outcome.

 

The god succeeded horrifically well.

 

His world was the very definition of mediocre. The god had managed to stomp out most forms of extremism. It was only after he succeeded that he realized the flaw in his plan. There is no way his experiment could survive an external invasion. A world in conflict had suffering, this is true, but it also avoided slothfulness. If there was no reason to get stronger, why get stronger? In order to keep his experiment stable, he constantly had to intervene. Every time he did, he made sure to err on the side of caution. He loved the people of his little world and wanted them to be happy.

 

The old saying, calm waters never made a skilled sailor, was never more appropriate.

 

Now with the war front collapsing, it was possible he might find himself as the last line of defense. His creation might have to fight for its own survival. He didn't have much time, a few centuries at best, decades at worst. He needed to fix the situation. Fast. The problem was, politically, There is no way any of the other gods would allow him to get any stronger, and that included the people in his experiment. So he thought, and he thought, and slowly an idea formed. He thought of a way to get around the monitors.

 

He would find beings that matched up in his world with The Dark World, pick those who were strong and showed promise, and switch them. He'd get a strong soul to help his world. The soul sent to the other world might have some problems, but the soul was arriving in a body native to that world. It wouldn't have too many issues, especially if they stayed near the rift. Here and there, he switched souls from his universe to the Dark World. Slowly, quietly, cautiously, he would build up a reserve of souls who could defend his world. Everything was going according to plan.

 

Then Toshi showed up.

 

The God floated in his personal workspace and watched Toshi intently. He didn't bring Toshi here. In his experiments, yes, he had to take some risks. He was basically sneaking into another universe through a backdoor. It was possible Toshi got caught up in the wake of one of those attempts. Honestly, he wasn't quite sure what happened.

 

The god regretted lying to Toshi. It wasn't that he couldn't return Toshi, it was that trying to do so would raise too many questions. The God also had no idea how Toshi even survived the process. He wasn't lying about that. Toshi shouldn't exist. Yet, he does. It was likely because Toshi's soul strength was off the charts. Wondering how useful Toshi could be, The God checked out the many possible futures and found... Nothing.

 

Toshi's soul strength was so high he was unpredictable. A soul that powerful could, even in a world where magic was locked down like in the experiment, break those shackles like tissue paper. There were limits, of course It would manifest itself in subtle ways. To anyone else, it would just seem like he lived a charmed life. Who knows? Maybe that's why he survived getting ripped out of his world in the first place.

 

Maybe Toshi was just lucky.

 

The single greatest limitation to what Toshi could accomplish would be Toshi himself. What sort of person was he? Would he ruthlessly build a financial empire built on the bodies of his enemies? Would he descend into decadence concerned only with his harem of fuck buddies? The god had already regretted flipping that teacher in America. The idiot had got himself arrested for having sex with a student. Fat lot of good he was going to be in prison. Was Toshi going to be a problem as well?

 

However, when Toshi called out about needing to talk about ‘Seems Basically The Same’, God chuckled. As he listened to Toshi protesting what he saw as injustice, God started to wonder. As he overheard Toshi lamenting that his own morality prevented him from taking advantage of others, God was surprised. When the angel in the computer he had given as a gift took two bullets for Toshi, God’s heart-equivalent organ was in his throat. There was no telling where Toshi's soul might wind up if it got reincarnated too quickly. God was grateful That Toshi survived. More importantly, God was absolutely floored that Toshi risked his life to save an enemy.

 

The wheel turned and the other gods came. Demons has joined into the fight. It was a multi-front war now. Things were getting complicated. They needed more troops. They demanded more angels. This time the god of reverse world wasn't going to just let his minions be sent off to die. He'd go with them and make sure they came back. The other gods were puzzled by this move, but didn't have any reason to disagree.

 

It was a big risk, but he had worked hard to make sure it would be difficult to discover Toshi. This was a huge gamble, for while he was gone, they would surely search through mirror world and see what secrets were hidden. However, if they found none, when he returned, they wouldn't have any excuse to keep harassing him. If they found Toshi, they would do anything to take him, but if Toshi remained where he was, his very nature would finally solve the energy crisis he world was dealing with.

 

His angels advised against it, but he ignored them. This was a high stakes game with everything on the line, but if he won, he'd win big. And why would he risk everything on a long shot? Truth told, it was Toshi. He was nothing like what God expected. He just had a good feeling that maybe, just maybe, it'll all work out.

 

As God prepared to march off to war, God did something unusual.

 

It was something he had not done in a very long time.

 

He began to have hope.

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