Chapter Twelve

"And now, I see you're trying to take matters into your own hands once again."

 

Callana felt… bad. Yes. That was the word.

When she woke up the morning after changing the Gina’s body—turns out, normal humans only sleep for a few hours at a time—she couldn’t help but feel like she’d crossed a line.

For all the mistakes she’d made, this was the first truly permanent one. And she’d done it to the Gina against her will, too. Truth is, she hadn’t slept as long as she’d pretended to. The Gina had done the “crying” all night, and Callana had heard a lot of it. Now, from an objective stance, the Gina probably just didn’t realize how much better her new body was in comparison to the old one. But Callana had undergone a few changes of her own over the past week—or, well, 200,000 years or so, give or take. And as much as she’d wanted to help the Gina, she had done to her much the same as Callana had done to herself when trying to escape the Angry Things. Even after all this time, Callana still hadn’t moved past her lost size, her reduced form.

Inadvertently, she’d chosen her body from one of the smallest human adults on the beach. While that may have helped her blend in, it also made her feel that much more vulnerable. Even the Gina towered over her now. And yes, Callana could change her form at any time, but something felt… right about this one. If she’d stuck herself inside a body like Von’s, she probably would’ve regretted it immediately. Something about her hips, her breasts, her slender hands—it just fit, in a way that didn’t make much sense to her. Before, she hadn’t cared about her body at all. Why did this one fit so well? Maybe it was because she resembled the… the what? She thought for a moment, but the concept she’d been grasping at seemed too abstract, too incomprehensible, even for her godlike intellect. Perhaps if she Willed herself the knowledge of All Things, but… no, something she’d seen when she knew Everything had scared her. Every time she Willed herself the knowledge, she never kept it for long, even though it was her birthright to own. Even now, it shook her just to think about what she had known.

Some things, she supposed, were too much for anyone to bother learning. No matter. All that mattered was her form, and how oddly comfortable it felt. What worried her was the idea that she might have to go back one day. Or what may happen if she never did go back. If another of her kind wandered too close, it wouldn’t even know she was there, and she might be eaten before she had the chance to react. The same way she used to eat…

Oh.

Oh, no.

Had she ever… no, she… she couldn’t have eaten people before. But then, she had consumed entire realities, feasting on them, star by star, planet by planet.

Planets full of people.

That thought had bubbled up in her mind a few times in the past few days, but she’d refused to acknowledge it. But having hurt the Gina like that? That opened the door. And suddenly, a lot of things made sense. She scrambled out from under the covers, tangling herself in the sheets before rushing out into the living room, wearing the baby-blue set of pajamas the Gina had given her. The sheets still trailing behind her, wrapped around her legs and arms, she found the Gina and the Von sitting on the couch, then leapt onto the Gina in an unprompted hug.

An empty feeling flooded through her, and she shivered as the Gina sputtered and stammered in shock.

“Whoa—hey, Callana,” the Gina said.

“Morning,” the Von said, leaning away from the pile of snuggles on the other side of the couch.

A low whine forced itself through Callana’s lips as she tightened her grip around the Gina’s waist.

“Uh,” the Gina said, “are you okay, Cal?”

“Is she… okay?” the Von said.

“I’m so sorry,” Callana said, forcing each word out, incapable of expressing her grief. Her body warped, thousands of phalanges growing on the bare patches of skin visible through her shirt. “I didn’t rea-lize—I had no idea…”

"Oh, shit," the Von muttered, staring at her extra fingers, each of which had begun sprouting eyeballs on the knuckles. They faded, and she grimaced. She started hyperventilating, struggling to take in enough air to fill the thousands of lungs hidden within her highly compressed form.

“Oh,” the Gina said. “D—did you hear all that?”

Callana shook her head, unsure what the Gina meant. Perhaps she had been talking to the Von about how evil Callana was. That would make sense.

“I’m not mad,” the Gina said. “I—uh, I don’t mean I’m super happy right now or anything, and I guess I’d have to say that what you did was… wrong, but I don’t want you to feel too bad or anything. I just wish you’d asked me is all. And from now on, I’d like you to ask before you do anything like that—to me or to anyone else, okay? But I accept your apology, okay?”

“Nuh-uh,” Callana said. “You don’t un-der-stand—it’s… I…”

The Von and the Gina shared a look, shrugging at each other.

“I guess… if you need to talk about it, I have the headspace to listen,” the Gina said.

“I—I just—I…” Callana couldn’t choke the words out, as much as she needed to. How was she supposed to even think about what she’d done? How many galaxies had she consumed over the eons? How many lives had she taken? How many Ginas had she murdered? All she could do was hold the girl in front of her, silently begging her to never go away, never ever leave. Millennia had passed Callana by without her even noticing, but these past few days? They’d been like ages to her. Before, she might sleep for a hundred billion years without blinking, but an hour around the Gina felt like an eternity. An eternity she wished would never end.

And so long as the Gina stayed safe, it never would end. So in that moment, Callana pledged to never let anything ever happen to the Gina, as long as she lived—which would be forever, thankfully.

“I’m bad,” Callana finally said. “I a-ate people, I think.”

“What?” the Von said, recoiling.

“A—a long time ago,” Callana clarified. “I used to eat stars, before I found bottles. And ga-la-xies—re-a-li-ties. I ate them. And I didn’t think about it. They were tasty, and it was just food. But…”

“If you ate galaxies,” the Gina continued, “then you might have eaten planets with people on them.”

Callana nodded.

“Did you know?” the Von asked. “Did you know that you were eating… people?”

Shaking her head, Callana grimaced. “Never. Never even heard of people. No. I did not know about the humans. Planets seemed too small. And it wasn’t until I had to shrink that I real-ized. And now, I don’t think the Angry Things were… wrong to hurt me. They pro-bab-ly just didn’t wanna get eaten.”

“Yeah,” the Gina said. “I wouldn’t want to get eaten either, I think. But, I mean, you were born big, right? You couldn’t have known. No one told you, no one fought back, so you were… grazing. Like a cow or something. Just eating what’s nearby, not thinking about the bugs on the leaves.”

Again, Callana nodded.

“But now,” the Gina continued, “you’re not so big, and you know what’s on the leaves. So, you won’t eat any more planets, right?”

“Yes. No more planets,” Callana said. “No more. No more.”

“Good,” the Gina said. “Unless you can bring back the people you swallowed, I don’t really think there’s anything you can do about the past. In that case, feel what you feel, and try to do better in the future. That’s all.”

A grim thought came over Callana’s mind. “There aren’t any people on bottles, are there?”

“No,” the Gina said. “There aren’t any people on bottles. Just bacteria, and they don’t have brains, so they can’t feel anything.”

“Promise?”

“Yeah, Cal. I promise,” the Gina said with a soft smile.

Callana squeezed her tighter. “I will make sure no one eats the Gina or the earth. I would not like it if anyone ate the galaxy either.”

“Well,” the Von said, “with someone as strong as you on the lookout, I bet we’ve got nothing to fear.”

Yes. Nothing to fear. Except the Old Things and, worse, Them. But those were old, old worries. Most of the Old Things were dead anyway. Mostly dead, at least. Death wasn’t quite the same for things as big as those. Still, if worse came to worst, she could take the Gina and the Von—and maybe the Nard, if he asked nicely—to a different reality. A better one with more bottles!

 “You know,” the Gina said, “I’m honestly surprised you realized all this so soon.”

Von nodded along, finally finishing the last dregs of his drink.

“I’m… pretty proud of you,” the Gina added, shrugging. “If I’d known what you were from the start, I’d have assumed you’d be pretty set in your ways, but you’ve done a good job adapting. I dunno how much it counts for, but you have my approval. I mean, that sounded a bit more formal than I meant it to. Good job is what I’m trying to say. You know?”

No. No, that wouldn’t do. This wasn’t some self-deprecating call for love and attention, this was serious. Callana didn’t deserve absolution, she deserved excommunication. To be cast out, thrown away like a bottle without the beer in it anymore. From the moment Callana had first seen humans, she had recognized their sapience—they simply exuded intelligence, even when she couldn’t understand them or their behavior. Perhaps they were weaker than Callana or her kin, and they only had one brain each, but the last few days had proven in her mind that that simply didn’t matter much. The Gina might not have had the Will to change the world around her, but she was a precious thing, surely enough.

And to think… the Gina was one of an infinite number of her kind. The endless, cascading realities that comprised the Three Spheres simply went on, as did the stars and galaxies within them. And since Callana had had no beginning, she had not simply committed a singular crime, nor even a finite number of crimes. Callana had consumed an infinite number of galaxies. Infinite genocide. An act of extermination on an unimaginable scale.

And Callana wasn’t alone. Her kin were uncountable as well.

By the Wills. Even with Callana’s rampage coming to an end, countless lives would continue to die at the ignorant hands—tentacles—of her kin. And there was nothing she could do about it.

Nothing.

And even that didn’t scare her as much as the thing she’d given up her omniscience to forget. Whatever that was, it had left a lasting sense of dread and horror in her many hearts.

It would be so easy to Will this realization away. To forget it all and return to her old existence. She wanted to, so bad. Perhaps her old life had been horrific, but the ignorance… it drew her. That the temptation was this strong… that said something about Callana, didn’t it?

As she continued to weep, holding the Gina as tight as she could without hurting her, she realized something else.

If she did Will herself back to the way she used to be, she’d forget about the Gina, wouldn’t she? No. No, no, no. The Gina did not deserve to be forgotten. The Gina was too important. How she was important, Callana couldn’t say, but she just was.

“You are im-por-tant,” Callana said out loud. “I will not for-get the Gina.”

“Oh,” the Gina said, “that’s nice. I’m glad you’ll remember me, I guess? You aren’t going anywhere, right?”

“I do not know,” Callana said. “I do not know how to say… how many bad things I have done. No num-ber is big enough. I do not… de-serve to know you.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” the Gina said. “There’s a lot of talk about deserving stuff going on, and, uh, I don’t really think that’s healthy. I get that you’ve hurt some people in the past, but the future is what matters now, okay?”

Callana shook her head. “If you could not see my old body without hurting, you could not un-der-stand how many I hurt. The past is now. The future is now. All time is now. I can see it. It is all right in front of me.”

It was true. When Callana looked back, she could see all the previous moments, frozen in time, like static objects. And if she wished to, she could see the future the same way, albeit with more branches and exceptions. If Callana wished, she could simply watch herself obliterate civilization after civilization, as easily as watching teevee.

“You do not un-der-stand,” Callana repeated, pulling herself away from the Gina. “I cannot ex-plain it, either. I do not have the words.”

The Gina blinked at her, a sweet smile gracing her lips. “I don’t need to understand to care, Cal. You and I might not have the same… brain structure, or whatever, but I can see that you’re hurting, and I want to help.”

Callana nodded, sniffling.

“You know,” the Von said, “even if you see time differently, it doesn’t mean you have to look back at all the stuff you’ve done. You can acknowledge it without wallowing in it.”

“Yeah,” the Gina said. “Look, when Von came out to me, I screamed in his face, called him… awful things. When I look back on it, I… feel like I’m dying. But I don’t have to think about it. That’s not the same thing as pretending it didn’t happen or running away from it, it just means… well, when I catch myself dwelling on the past, I say, ‘okay, I see what I did wrong, I see what I could have done better, and I’ll pledge to do better in the future, but I don’t need to think about this right now.’ And then, I imagine a box. I open up the box, and I take all the thoughts and memories of the stuff I’ve done wrong in the past, and I put them in the box. Then I close it and lock it, and I put it away somewhere safe. But I keep the key with me, and I remember to acknowledge it. Because you don’t have to suffer all the time to make amends. You’re allowed to just live your life.”

Taking a deep breath, Callana nodded. “You are a nice person,” she said. “The Von is, too. There is just… I know too much, and I do not want to know what I know an-y-more, but I do not want to forget the good things, but the good things and the bad things are… mixed to-ge-ther.”

The Gina offered a grim half-smile. “That’s how things are sometimes.”

“Yes,” Callana said. “I do not think I will for-get. I… I will try to hold on.”

“Then I guess I don’t have only one thing to be proud of you for,” the Gina said.

 

Hello, friends! If you're enjoying this story, consider supporting me on Patreon! If you'd like more stories, I post new chapters to my mainline series every Monday and Friday, and I upload a new short story every other Wednesday! Below are some of my other stories.

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The Old Brand-New: Lena lives in a lonely mansion, but one snowy night, a vengeful clone of herself comes to make her pay for the life she never got to live.
Little Comforts: The world ends, and two men, Dan and Andrew, must rush to the shore for safety, pursued by a vengeful soldier and the remains of her family.