Emancipation

episode 16

Raen awoke even more disoriented than when she fell asleep. She lay within an ornate tapestry tent, on piles of thick velvet pillows. Vaguely she recalled fainting in an infinitely white space. While the tent was far darker than that space had been, light filtering through the weave of the fabric let her know she probably hadn't moved. Raen crawled towards the flap that appeared to be the exit from the room-sized tent. She wasn't sure she could find her feet beneath her. Outside of the tent the infinite white space extended in all directions. A small mat lay a few feet from the tent opening and a spread of tasty smelling foods were laid out on it in ornate plates and bowls.

Raen attacked the food like a starving woman. Partway through the meal, she noticed Beaoul sitting next to the tent staring out into the whiteness with an unfocused look on her face. Feeling suddenly full Raen felt the creeping effect of disorientation rolling back over her. There was something wrong with the universe. There was an emptiness where extra layers of reality should be. She stared openly at Beaoul waiting for the hellhound to respond.

After some time Beaoul blinked and took notice of Raen. "Oh, welcome back to consciousness. I was starting to worry. Toni kept telling me I slept much longer the first time I arrived here."

"Toni?"

"We are currently sitting within a multidimensional entity that the civilizations of the old omniverse referred to as a Middle of Everywhen entity, or a MOE. She prefers Toni. A friend from the old omniverse called her that casually and she claimed it as well as the pronoun she. MOEs are neither male nor female in actuality. They are a multidimensional version of a single-celled organism," Beaoul stated.

Raen held a hand to her head to steady it. Something still felt entirely wrong with the universe. "Don't you feel that?"

Beaoul cocked her head to the side for a minute. "Feel what?"

"Like there is a whole bunch of people that are just missing! Like we are alone here! No one is listening!"

Beaoul's eyes went unfocused. "Toni says she feels it too. It could be something on a meta-universal level. She has a theory that all the omniverses exist within a larger overarching sort of pseudo existence. Like within a story someone is telling. Perhaps you two are sensing something going on on that level? It would have to be a truly cosmic event to reach this far into our reality though."

"Cosmic? Multiverse? Omniverse what the heck is all of that!"

A dark-rimmed door opened in the whiteness of their surroundings. Beaoul chuckled, "I think Toni wants to show you something."

Hesitantly, Raen rose and walked towards the door. She entered a darkened corridor. Raen walked through the corridor, wondering where it actually came from. To her left and right were moving dioramas of scenes that The Middle of Everywhen thought were most illustrative of the prior omniverse. Raen didn't know what the creature/place used to define the list of dioramas.

The first diorama she encountered was full of stars, galaxies, and planets swirling into being against a background that almost had a pattern. Next, it was like this nascent universe passed through a prism and became many nearly identical universes. This is where Raen discovered she could zoom in on the dioramas. She zoomed in until she could see that the prism causing the universes to diverge was a generic-looking person.

Raen passed the next few dioramas not really clear on what they were showing. She stopped in front of one that looked like a web of glowing dots spread in a pattern through empty space. Curious she zoomed in on one of the clusters of dots to finally come to the understanding that each glowing orb was a person. It was pretty. Then a dimming of the orbs passed through the diorama until there was only a small corner of the diorama still properly lit. Raen zoomed in on the active border to discover that the dimming represented a stifling of individuality by a collective of parasites. Suddenly somewhere in the middle of the dimmed patch one orb shone more brightly than any in the uninfected area. As that brightness enveloped the whole diorama the orbs all began to shine as brightly as before.

So there had been a point in the old omniverse where individuality and free will were almost driven from existence. Interesting. Raen passed a number of other dioramas that didn't show much on the scale they were natively set at and she saw little reason to zoom in. She reached another like the darkening one. this time instead of a sudden bright glow spreading light back throughout the universe smaller spark-like splashes of light erupted like fireworks spreading out from the light section until almost all the orbs glowed as bright as before. Raen cocked her head at that.

The next several displays showed universes imploding in a pattern throughout the omniverse. They were interesting until it became clear the pattern was accelerating. The edge of the omniverse began to darken and thicken. Small fireworks flashed through the edge, some stabilizing beyond the implosive sphere of the omniverse, but most just burned brightly and flickered out. The next diorama was zoomed in on one of those still brightly burning sparks, Raen could see the nearly white interior of the Middle of Everywhen entity she stood within. It seemed highly compressed neatly wrapped around a woman Raen didn't recognize.

Then the diorama zoomed in on an even smaller spark, inside its swirling event horizon slept a little girl, with a bracelet, on that bracelet was stamped, "Raen Davis." Before Raen could try to rewind the diorama's scene back to the origin of that spark light filled the diorama in another dance of creation. The spark holding Raen and the spark that was the Middle of Everywhen were swirled randomly into the baby universe. Raen's spark opened on a small backwater colony of earth named Tradehub and she lost track of the other spark.

Sparks penetrated the new omniverse from all around. A large glowing orb existed just beyond the edge of the new omniverse. It glowed brightly as though the MOE wanted her to go there. Then the glow of that orb grew to fill the space until it faded back into the nearly infinite white space within the Middle of Everywhen.

Beaoul walked up from behind Raen. "What did it show you?" There was the hint of an excited grin on her wolfishly hellhound face.

"I think it is sending us somewhere," Raen stated. "Did you know I wasn't from this omniverse?"

Beaoul sat on her haunches, "I had some idea that first night when I scratched you and it healed."


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Beaoul