Something in the back of Jade’s sprite mind told her it had to be a conscious decision. To stop the ship. To mourn.
So that’s that she did. Decided. Her friends were gone – and Dave – even if there was a non-feathered version of him on the other side, it wasn’t the one who she has started to have feelings about.
The ship stopped. Light years from it’s destination. For days she cried. Realized stopping might have been the wrong decision. Now she’d be late. Late for whatever awaited her. She knew it.
More days passed. There were no bodies. The whole planetoid that was LOWAS had barely left a trace. The had to do something, but – there was nothing to do. Hours laying on her bed, staring at the ceiling, more hours just wandering the ship. She felt the calls of … someone. Consorts? Didn’t care.
She slowly realized the ship was being wrecked – it was her fault. That the holes in the walls were her shape – metal subconsciously curled away like so much air turbulence. She had tunnelled through the ship so much more easily than a worm through dirt.
She had to stop.
It was a conclusion, not a decision. To turn around, to head back. If there was anything like real space in the domain of The Scratch, she’d find something. If there wasn’t… well, she’d already wrecked everything. Speed of light, half that – it didn’t matter. She headed back.
~
After weeks, she went to Dave’s room. It was easier… but no comfort. A good number of his things had been moved from his apartment room. She idly played with the turn tables for a few moments. But there was nothing for her here.
~
John’s room took longer. He might have survived, if not for Dave. Something in the old sprite mind assured her of this.
But a few weeks more, and she went in. Knocked on the door in spite of herself, hoping for an answer. There was something less exotic about him. More than just the lack of feathers. He was the brother the game had denied her – even if the game was the only reason she existed. That was nothing to dwell on.
Unlike Dave, John’s room on the ship was alchemized rather than moved. It was his decisions at the time. The beanbag hammock was weird, but he liked it. Had liked it.
There was no computer on his desk – rather, a notepad. The opened it up. “Space jokes”. Dagnabit, he actually did have a list. most of them were horrible, things he had crossed out. A space bar? lame. Some were pretty creepy. “Did you know that 37 earths could fit up your anus” – that wasn’t even a joke. And not how you pronounced Uranus.
Jade’s eyes narrowed. Could she? The sprite mind had no answer, as neither Earth nor Uranus were not part of the game.
She took the notepad with her. Figuring that the first inspiration to actually do something in months was good – no matter how weird.
~
The first problem was the lack of a single earth. Her science books offered that 5.97219 × 10^24 kilograms would suffice for any calculations.
5.97219 × 10^24 kg × 37 was 2.2097103 × 10^26 kilograms … weird math, but straightforward. A lot heavier than the actual gas planet – massive. yes.
Science. Numbers. Facts. Felt good.
Of course, she could ‘grow’. it would all fit that way. Anything would fit that way… no, wait, she couldn’t create mass. She’d appear big and use her space power to actually move things. Unacceptable. It all would have to shrink.
It would have to be the planetoids. Rose’s and Dave’s were no good for food, they could go. Hey, the combination of water and lava might result in something pleasantly warm instead of scald-
She was actually considering this. She realized. Was she that bored?
After a minute listening to the silence that permeated the ship, she decided she sure was.
~
It turned out that planets are ridiculously easy to alchemize – ridiculously cheap. Why, the grist components of one crocodile was almost enough to get you another planet of them. Mid-experimentation, she’d even come across a device that would do the process directly – though it didn’t cut down on the screams of terror and pain. And Turtles weren’t nearly efficient. It’s not like either would have homes once this experiment was over.
The only problem was scaling, which Jade was uniquely qualified to get perfect.
A LOHAC was only a kilometer around – 2.1446363 × 10^11 kilograms.
A LOLAR was bigger – 1.9 kilometers around, but not nearly as dense, due to all it’s water – so 3.47481 × 10^11 kilograms.
40 Billion matched pairs, give or take. That was all it took to make a psuedo-earth. And weeks of alchemical experimenting, production lines of various qualities filing the halls of the ship, sometime threading through the hold she made in he earlier bout of depression. But she could do it. Make a proper planet. Dozens.
Fabricators. Grist extractors. Mergers. Stabilizers. Filers. Re-mergers. Stratifiers. Coolers. Assembly lines winding in and out of rooms that couldn’t exist in 3 dimensional space, splaying across floors – walls – ceilings, looping back on each other in configurations completely logical to a god who didn’t care if mortal eyes would ever see it. This was her creation. For her pleasure. She might create a galaxy on the countless bones of this game when she got back.
She experimented with other captcha codes for more efficiency – but there were just too many options, an not enough sources of grist. The screams continued.
The storage rooms were becoming difficult. Too many grounds. The ship slowed to a halt as Jade used more of her power to keep the inevitable from happening before the appointed time. Even as her tier levelled up, her efforts stretched her – mentally, physically. Yet she had never felt so much pride in her achievements.
~
Every so often, as the machinery chugged along, Jade would pull out two or three of the almost-finished rocks and play with them. Set them up in different orbits, crushing manufactured continents, heat them up a little bit to set off volcanoes – fun stuff. One problem she couldn’t crack was the atmosphere one – it would be a cool selfie, hovering over these planets, blotting out the stars. But the air wasn’t acting right. The blues of the atmosphere were wrong. And any time she tried to shrink down – something prevented her. Planck’s constant? No. Something she was missing. There were other things to think about, anyways.
~
The machinery was quiet. If Jade’s language had kept up with her understanding, she might have come up with a work other than ‘kilometers’. That clearly covered too few dimensions – ones she couldn’t control nearly as well. Of course, a single rock in those three was the point of this diversion.
Jade had some thoughts about what might come next. Some orbital setups that would be a nice challenge, perhaps some permanent translations between dimensions. Even a few tweaks to the assembly line – matrix? Matrix was a good word, fewer limitations – that she had set up.
Even Magic words would have been good for the occasion. But stuff like “abracadabra” seemed … weak. Ill timed.
296 balls of rock – and ice – floated around her, The played with their orbits for a few minutes, an intricate demonstration of various n-body problems mirrored multiple times, managed so they acted like they orbited her – despite the huge difference in mass.
She slowly slipped out of her clothes – it seemed appropriate. If any human were around to see this, it would be either horrifying or erotic. Her discarded clothes were tossed into the path of the planets – and were shredded almost immediately. Mindless chaos. Maybe some close external encounters afterwards? Nothing Heroic or Just about that.
Raising her hands, she made what she felt were appropriate folding motions. The number of orbs halved, and after some internal fiddling, halved again. She took another few moments to re-establish orbits, and work on compacting 74 orbs to something more manageable. It was getting difficult not to use space powers on herself – their pull was showing more spikes, out of necessity, even if it was easier to manage numerically.
Baseball? No, that would require her growing. Billiard Balls? Maybe two or three. Savor that feeling for a moment, then shrink the to make room. Then superball – no, might as well go straight to marble-sized. They had to fit.
One more fold. 37 earths. Or, they could be, if she took the time to form them, and let more water bubble to the surface… but the possibility of squirting didn’t seem like that good of an idea. Even less so, years of gushing.
The last calculations or orbit were mental – well within the god-teir’s purview. Planets were compressed was compressed. The room was hot – she exchanged the air a few times to compensate.
Ok… bend over… and line up one orbit to… just…
FATALITY
~
Ok, Jade thought after she resurrected a few minutes later, 36 earths would be sufficient as a proof on concept. And no pretending like she couldn’t use space powers. when handling planets.
After re-ripping off her clothes, she grabbed one of the remaining two billiard-sized ones and eased it in.
Wow. That was. Warm? Smooth? Just plain weird feeling? But hey, if fit like she expect it too – and was sort of sticking… but that’s gravity for you.
The next was even weirder, pushing the first deeper. Maybe she should have made then a little denser than they strictly needed to be? She waited a moment for her anatomy to adjust – ad bit longer than expected, due to the gravity. She tried stretching a little – eventually they moved up, but only with effort.
As the newness of the feeling faded, she noticed her marble’s orbits – all 34 of them – were starting to degrade. Right. Shrink down the ones inside of her and get on with it.
The bust of heat from within her loins was… not scalding. Barely. Certainly not the stimulation she hoped for. Ow. Well, she wasn’t planning on using that organ soon. Ow. Getting on with it.
She grabbed a marble, compensating for orbits while she stuck it in. Easier. Fourth earth – Ok, she could do this. The fifth insertion, and she was noticing a distinct pull – which got stronger with the sixth and seventh. She took a moment to adjust their position inside her – the gravity was … off. Nothing she couldn’t handle. She was a god. She would handle it.
Eight slid in with no problem – as it should. These were still much smaller than the ‘billiard’ size. But – space powers. Redirect the gravity’s effect on the rectum. Ok.
Ninth. Was her… vision darkening? No.
Tenth & Eleventh. Almost rocketed into place.
Twelfth & Thirteenth … Why was there crunching. Why was the room so dark. She summoned a flashlight – it almost broke her arm as she grabbed it out of suspension she strained, lifting it above her head
She only saw its beam of light as she forced it directly over her head.
Oh
No
What are the
…it was the last thought that registered. The last thought that could register, as the remaining 26 planets crashed into her body.
~
The singularity – the black hole – that had formed in her gut – took out the physical form of her ship before any observer would be able to register it. There one second, gone the next. The marvels – or horrors – that it contained shattered along with it, their scaffolding gone.
Space shrunk. The Golden Yard was steadily consumed, one dense rock orbiting it the only testament as to what lay in the middle of the blackness.
It was not Just. It was not Heroic.
And Jade never found a safe place to wake up.
___
Jade decides not to continue with the plan once John and Davesprite die – eventually to let her space powers take priority.
https://archiveofourown.org/works/4043317
Leave a Reply