Beginnings of a Novel

Make Way for the Thhawls

Prologue

One can look at all events as ineluctable, reasoning that all decisions are illusory, perhaps always driven by the stimuli about us; or, one can be as convinced that our free will does bear our future, after all. The sole thing, about the inevitability of which we don’t argue about—and do fear—is the end of the individual; thoughts of an Existence without us, our atoms homogeneously scattered about the Earth, the universe—such musings make one feel strange, sad… hollow within. Humans, in tales and in truth, have ever sought after its cure—healthy, youthful immortality is arguably the greatest desire anyone can ever nurse. Yet when we broaden the perspective, we get to behold the primal, abstract element comprising deaths— Change. It is the one thing that has reigned with unquestioned suzerainty since it all ever was.

  
We cannot know by looking at a stagnant pond slathered over by a mushy mantle; or by looking at the mountains; or by gazing at the limitless expanses of the night sky. Change, as tireless as it is in its relentlessness, is everywhere; we are either too slow or too quick to feel it with our biological apparatus. Nothing—not even our ability to conceive the world—exists without Change. There's another abstract entity, called Mind, which shelters our memory; and regardless of how unfaithful the latter is to one, our memory of Change and a pinch of imagination breeds the illusion of Time—and Time, well, as infinite as it is against the instantaneous extent of our existence, it indeed is the master of all.

There was a time, not long ago, when humans first realised the grand scale of Existence—that we are insignificantly puny and short-lived when placed against the macrocosmic backdrop. We discovered that there are unfathomably myriad worlds and bizarre, beautiful happenings, up above, far from what’s familiar to us; even the universe that we suddenly knew to be so immense—had perhaps had a point in cosmic history when it was born.

The Big Bang has become a synonym for how it had all begun; the term is used by all people aware of it, from laymen to erudite cosmologists—it has been veritably the sole rival to look in the eyes of religious theories of Creation; and to back it, there are some astronomic deductions, pun intended, one of them being the growth of space itself. It is concluded, that the further an object is from us, the faster it recedes away—as if the universe is a three dimensional surface of a four dimensional balloon in the process of blowing up; well, now that is for mathematicians to make sense of, but the scientific viewpoint of creation had spawned a festering pimple too. Intellectual minds wondered if the universe was headed towards a scientific Armageddon. Believe me; all of the theories that are there about it are equally despairing and cold; especially, given there is no promise of eternal life—immortality— in such a scenario.

There is perhaps an idea that could be less soul-rending; that Existence progresses through cycles of birth and death and endlessly so. This is potentially enough, as an idea, to awe the brooding human psyche. It is a mere thought—as crippling it is for the Mind to think—that there has been an incomprehensibly immeasurable number of universes, each possibly governed by different natural laws, all of which would have expanded, twisted, fluttered, spread or unfurled into full bloom, before beginning the downhill ride to imminent and absolute oblivion, to birth another, or even a handful more— to remake the history of Change, to set the clock ticking afresh...

*****

Amidst the aeonian void of space, never floated a speck, so full of grace...

A stupendous biconvex lens was suspended in the placid nothingness. Near and far, bubbles, spheres and crystal structures, big and small, gave it company, all in a constant restless scurry, but one would miss it if one was too fast. Tugged by its brutish, mysterious pull, like an obedient servant, a similarly shaped object, but smaller, rolled and wobbled along the itinerary around the great beast of a world, with a typical, cosmic sloth. The smaller world—a satellite—was alive.

Cutting through the bewitched ether nestling all celestial things, a little, rogue object, not tied to any parent world, was rudely going to buck past. The satellite world dragged its course towards itself, and now it plummeted down through its enchanted, wispy mists.

Down it hurtled, coming ever closer to the surface, and slowing down over time’s passage. In the end, it made contact— and was instantly obliterated. The surface bulged up where it happened, and from a newly made hole, a glow emanated.

Nearby, within a snug, squat tower standing up from the surrounding black underbrush, a being was furiously scribbling on a sheet. The thunderous ring triggered by the impact was still sending waves of reverberation through the tower, and through the being, who felt very disturbed by it. The final, dying wave was the strongest, which shook everything. To the Being’s frustration, he— yes, because ‘he’ personifies much better than ‘it’, and because it is male chauvinistic— observed the accidental, unwelcome line drawn by his shoved hand right across the loads of scribble. The fluorescent blemish glowed at the Being’s bushy external organs, and he stared back at it for a while.

That was not a matter now; his job was done. He was a scientist, on the quest to comprehend the world around—and guess what—he had, somewhat. He had discovered things about his universe, as in those that would make it go poof! He was sure that at some point, all the celestial objects were much further apart than now; there had to have been a time when rogue meteors wouldn’t intrude this often. The Great Ether was crumpling up. His universe was going to take everything with it when it would—he pictured with his pacific wisdom—end.

He was a self-aware Being after all, spewing sentience from deep within, and his inclination to question it all was very justified indeed.

Stashed away in an unobtrusive corner of the eternal Great Ether, going around Great Wah since a very, very long time, was the satellite world of Lil’ Wah. Of the many regions on it that crawled with diverse life, the latter collectively called Voscans; the Being was a part of the zone called Dee-Biyel, and of being its part, he was definitely proud—boastful, precisely— for the belief that its inhabitants consisted of the superlative degree of elites and intellectuals of all the races on Lil’ Wah.

His paranoia about an irreversible end drawing near to the world, his dreads he had ever told about to his fellows, all of them—were ultimately and agonisingly, proven reasonable. He couldn’t have felt more victorious, despondent, guilty of finding it out himself, or more inclined to loathing everyone to emptiness. This was it, after having lived, survived for such long, this was the long awaited news for all Voscan-kind. His calm was gone now. End was edging close, and there was no escape from it. Everything that mattered would be immaterial in a future rather near.

Well, for virtually immortal organisms, soon can be anytime in the future. The universe changed at its own comfy rate, he couldn’t deny it, but he thought it was accelerating. He had to do something—but what? What in the Wah?

Some people (bear with me with that word, it would convey my point better) knew the ingredients required to slow down Change, slow down Time, and perhaps even reverse it. Called Uuls, those Voscans lived in the far past history. Each of them was wiser than all Voscans on Great Wah and Lil’ Wah put together. One of them had prophesised that the End was unavoidable, and that was the last of the Uuls. There had been none ever since. No one knew why Uuls had never tried to exercise their power and keep the End at bay; it was lore that when one of them did try, it was catastrophic. However the Being thought, Uuls were never born; one had to become an Uul. Yet he had no clue how.

With his scruples bursting with the discovery and an eerie sense of responsibility, he exited the tower. He desperately wanted to talk to somebody. The twinkling, sparkling, transparent void about him was feeling warm; or was it he that was going cold? He looked around, and behind the black bush, noticed something. A cone of light shone up toward the sky. The Being was drawn to it instantly; is that where a—the— meteor… the thingy ran into this place?

The ground bulged up. In the centre, there was the bright, gaping hole. The Being studied it with awe, and came nearer. He extended his hand involuntarily (yeah, he has a hand now, trust me). What he saw struck him with utter stupor.

In the purple-blue glow, his hand disappeared. In response, he quickly pulled it back, and stood still.

He tried to figure out what happened.

He slowly extended his hand again, and his hand disappeared in the light. As he looked, through his perfectly transparent hand, he saw on the other side, three other Voscans gaping at him.  The trio had probably come to check out the meteor-bulge; and one of them was his disciple. The Being was a preacher of sorts; followers he had too, and they were devoted to him madly. For a long spell though, he had been away from them, out here in all clandestinity.

The disciple opened an awkwardly placed mouth; he uttered faintly, “Master Ow-Klith! You are... an... Uul!”

Ow-Klith, the Being, had forgotten; there were foolproof ways to identify an Uul, one of which was that they were transparent under some lights—like in the glow from the impact site of a Divinorb from the Ether.

Ow-Klith, now Ow-Uul and enlightened, felt a pulse of emotions pass through himself. He had so much to know, and so much to make known.

Probably, to be continued...