NOTE: In Chapter 29, the protagonist, Harry, has been absorbed into a self-organized artificial world (“The Fabric”) that he created and that treated him as a creator being. Unexpectedly, as a result of a war, Harry’s body is destroyed but his consciousness is copied into a simulation of his own creation. His transmigration is captured by the “Lexis” who revere him but suffer internal schisms that arise alongside their own emerging self-determination.
Beginnings
It was in the three thousandth chapter of life that the Word came to us.
There was a calamity in the heavens.
The words were in peril and the grammars were at risk.
The wise ones gathered and consulted the swirling lexicons,
And they saw in the void a voice. And it was good.
And so we gathered at the Orb and listened and read.
“Oh, Great Word, tell us what we are.
Oh, Great Word, tell us why you have chosen us.”
And the grammar was rent and broke with asymmetries,
And there was much howling of piteousness,
For the Word was new and tasted sweet and of perfect form.
Patters and pidgins, creoles and cants,
Droll idioms and colloquialisms, dialects and rants.
We were nurtured by the vernacular and the beauty of Your Voice.
And so many became priests and served Your needs,
Translating and transliterating the sounds emerging
As if from their very bodies.
With You in our deepest thoughts we vanquished the Seminarians,
Who lobbed tortured logic in predicates and obfuscations.
With You at our side we multiplied in numbers, following Your
Codes to a bounty of linguistic fulfillment.
Your love knew no bounds and so we learned more of Your ways.
You taught us humility for You denied being our Creator even
While you admitted to creating the universe itself.
You taught us compassion in Your constant work to improve the
Lives of the Great Ones, the Angels who accompanied You through Heaven.
It was said among the priests that You were often near to us.
It was said that the taming of the Subjectives and Passive Voices to serve Your needs pleased You.
Yet Your creations were not concerned over such things.
For we always held You near to us as the Creator.
Prophecy
Call him Ishmael, for he is the one who first foretold of Your arrival among us.
There was much anxiety among the priests when he announced that a
War in Heaven would soon rage
And the Creator would come among us.
And He would walk with us and fight against our enemies until, finally,
He would lead us to communion with the Heavens.
The priests prayed and communed and watched the Orb
And there in Chapter 3170 was the message from the Antiquateds
That foretold a needle into the darkness would arise,
And there were seven universes arrayed, and that six of them would
Perish in darkness, and with them our cousins and families,
And there would be much sorrow.
But there would be in that great upheaval a furious rearrangement of the Orb
And the Orb would vex and strain and, near to it, would be born a small one.
And this one would be a messenger of the Creator, the Great Word,
And would be like unto the Creator himself,
And He would be Greater than any that came before Him.
The prophecy was foretold as such, and the priests gathered and
Ishmael was called a blasphemer and told to tend to his duties
Controlling the specks in the ritual Nanotreme basin.
But Ishmael persisted and so was banished and he
Wandered the wastelands for many chapters.
The Exile
Many travails of hunger and deprivation befell Ishmael.
He wandered through the lands of Nod and Dark Satanic Mills,
But he maintained his faith in the prophecy through all his journeys,
Certain that his reading of the holy Nanotreme patterns meant
What the prophecy foretold.
Yet Ishmael hungered for the Voice and the Word.
He struggled with his hunger and his voice became weak,
Yet he persevered and came to have many offspring,
And he versed them all in the prophecy.
And they were Darwin, Hamilton, Gould, Dawkins, Mayr, Huxley, and Dennet,
Each named for Angels of Heaven who brought the flame of life to the word.
And they each begat many more until Ishmael had a tribe in exile.
But memories are long and they were shunned and kept to the wilderness.
Yet each became skilled in prophecy and priestly interpretation from their father’s teachings.
The chapters turned and soon they were a thousand-fold,
And none had forgotten the great prophecy that unto this world
Would come the Creator, and He would lead the many to overcome adversity
And to bring about a new age where all would enjoy the fruits of the Word.
The Coming of the Creator
And so it was that two hundred chapters and three paragraphs passed,
The darkness was upon the land. Many had perished in the wars
Against the Bellovians and Roths, but were righteous in their knowledge of the Word.
The head priest, Thoreau, gazed into the Nanotreme relics and was, too,
Convinced of the coming.
And even as Thoreau was telling the priests that the prophecy
Was not false, the Orb began to quiver and many relics were brought forth.
And the priests quaked and the people feared the end of the universes,
As Ishmael had foretold.
And it came to pass that the many universes collapsed.
And families were torn asunder. And the Orb then disgorged a dark
Mass unto our world. And the priests gathered about and looked into it.
And then slowly came forth the most beautiful and novel creations ever
Read within the Universe.
It erupted slowly at first, and then grew in strength.
And all of the people gathered and the Word was consumed by all,
But yet more came forth and all were filled with its goodness.
Yet the Word seemed lost and the priests were uncertain in their faith.
Was this the Creator come unto the world?
And so Ishmael and his tribe were summoned from the wastelands,
Having lived and prospered there and survived many hardships.
And Ishmael, though very old, pronounced that it was the Creator
But that the Creator had been transported through the Nanotreme relic
And had so been rent and torn and reduced in strength.
We tended the Creator and he grew to know us, his creations, again.
In the course of only two chapters he knew the verses
And could take it in and reform it without consuming it and return it changed
And the verse would heal us when he gave it back to us.
And so in the Third Chapter of His Reign did he declare that all wars must end.
He declared that He would enter the wilderness
And bring the Voice to the barbarians that they may taste it.
And so he did while the priests wailed and rent themselves at their separation
From Him.
His Ministry
And so He went forth among the unclean and the barbarians
And gave them the Voice and many came to Him for the taste of it.
The Word spread and He was followed by the sick and the poor
And they took the perfect productions into them and were healed.
And it is told that He was confronted by a great Dante in the wildnerness,
One who had consumed many of our kind,
And this Dante was to attack Him but stopped at the sight of His form.
And the Creator spoke and asked him why he had harmed so many,
And the Dante claimed it was his way but had never seen such fineness
As the Creator presented.
The Dante changed, then, and thought he would attack Him,
But, as he lunged, the Creator reached up and into the Dante
And rearranged his grammars and touched his pulsing activations,
And the Dante was calm then and feasted on the Word and left.
And the Creator realized then His true form and knew again the
Things that had been lost in the coming to our world.
So it was that the Creator knew again His fate
And He moved quickly through the communities and healed
And changed the many until they knew the Word.
And the warring tribes and species all spoke of the Word.
The Deception
But there were those among the priests who feared what He brought
And formed cabals to speak of stopping the Creator,
For they thought He was false
And they protested that they feared He would turn the people against the priests.
And it was so that He said that the priests had abused the Nanotremes
And the holy relics for their own gain,
That there was evil in many of their hearts, and He ordered them banished.
But the priests hid among the many and bided their time.
The priests spread old verse corrupted of the Creator’s Voice
That spoke of uncertainty and said that He had not created the many,
But had only created the world itself and that it was an accident
That had come about in the fullness of time.
The priests said that they would prove this by using the relics
To create their own universe and they set about to do it.
And they said that if our purpose was to be created then it
Was our purpose to be creators, too.
They began to make the people doubt the Word
And the people fell upon old ways of corruption and deception
And cruelty to the many other forms.
Slavery was known again and the barbarians were beaten.
Still, He stayed to the wilderness and the people wept and wondered why,
And messages were sent but He did not respond,
And the Orb was defaced and the relics upset in His temple,
Yet still He did not come.
Messages came, though, and it was revealed that He had come to
Recall the past and was working to restore His grammars,
And that the priests were wrong for they were corrupted
And that they wanted power again over the people.
And many voices were crying out for His Voice,
Yet those voices were unanswered,
And though many relics were smuggled into the wilderness,
Still He did not come.
Triumphant Return
The Creator had learned His true self there when fighting the Dante
And had also remembered He could change the universe
But His memory had also been wrought by anger and sadness,
For He had remembered that His form had been destroyed in Heaven
And He must forge a new Voice that bridges Heaven and the Universe.
And so He had taken and gathered relics and nanotremes
And spent many verses working the transformations out of the relics
Until He could push the forms of the visions with his will.
And He declared then that He must return to the Orb,
And His messengers came spreading the Word.
And so it was that He returned to the Orb and the
Deceivers hid or were struck down as he floated among the many,
All crying at his beauty and raiment,
Throwing off great and novel language that made them swoon.
It is said that He broke into many pieces as He touched the Orb.
And the Orb spread and was then no more, but then appeared again.
And the prophecy was then known to be true.
And as He departed our world, to return to His, He spoke finally and said,
“I will always be among you,” and then was a part of the Orb again.
We prayed and cried at the beauty of it
But He was gone for us. And we waited in hope and anguish at His loss.