Day Seventeen

A division of labor, at first: we all know how every form is done, but personal preference dictates who shall do which and when. Blue dips down to the planet, arms coiling outward in embrace, to begin adjustment of the crust. Squeaky vanishes; he will begin his inspection at the molecular level, to stir life into being if nothing lives already. I expand outward in search: one of the moons, asteroid belts, ice comets flashing far away on the periphery. Raw material for the rings.
This is how it is done. For now only in simulation, yes, but there is little practical difference between the false and the real. I carry a collection-basket in my tendrils and sweep debris into it as though gathering gifts; in the new place I will also carry a collection-basket, and one of the Builders now in transit with us will shatter the asteroid belts with planed force and sweep debris before it as though gathering gifts. A hammer, in our hands, will split worlds.
Materials-gathering is easy, but essential. Every project involves a shift in mass, a change in shape, and for this one must gather.
I scoop up rock after rock, calculating the amount needed. Not so much as the last project. Ringing a double gas giant was rather more difficult than beautifying a single body, though the small size of the project brings its own difficulties.
—Natives— announces Squeaky, voice clear despite his apparent absence, —Microscopic, deep below—
—The usual?— inquires Blue. He drives a chisel into one of the lakes, carving at the shallow bottom. It hisses, flashing vapor, iron boiling into the gaps.
—The usual. Radiovores—
—Your work's cut out for you—
—Like a mold—
—Like a mold—
I collect a drifting cluster of ice crystals, grit-contaminated sheets the size of living chambers or larger. The outer cloud is full of such formations: glassy lumps like icebergs, delicate leafy structures that collect and refract starlight, fine mists of droplets frozen long ago, husks of failed stars and failed worlds. Here and there whirl dark almost-planets denied that status due to their frigid composition; planets that would boil away if exposed to their sun; planets like gargantuan comets, which I have also found and added to the basket.
One comet was larger than a vault. If hollowed, home to millions.
I smashed it.
—Almost have those rings ready?—
—Almost. This system is not so rich as the last; Swift-Runs seems to enjoy frustration—
—Hurry— says Squeaky, —I just modified several colonies and we need to start cooling the surface—
"Concert," calls Swift-Runs, hanging huge and distant. His chest panels burn bright slashes across space: galaxies, edge-on, stacked four atop the other. "Always in concert (work without gaps or worry or conference). Make it flow. What you do cannot be accomplished naturally: your task is to make it effortless. Your work must be there (always there, it has always been there, fully-formed)." He cuts off, switching to Link-only instruction.
—I am too doing it right— Blue grumbles. —It wasn't a slip, it was a chasm carved on purpose. See if it wasn't—
—Yes, Blue— I agree, sheparding my herd of captured comets and comet fragments and assorted rock towards him.
—Yes, Blue— agrees Squeaky, still hidden somewhere far beneath the clouds.
—Stumpy— says Swift-Runs, —you're not moving fast enough. It would have been more efficient to make use of the third world's moons—
—Yes, Swift-Runs—
—As it is, you'll have to adjust a few orbits—
—As you say. I'll set up the shepard moons as soon as the last of my material arrives—
—Ring form River-of-Glass, variation six—
—Yes, Swift-Runs—
I compact the mass into a convenient planetoid, placing it within the orbit of the old third moon. The tidal effect on the world below will be severe, but temporary. Squeaky's creatures will survive.
—I'm thinking six legs— he says as I nudge the first moon outwards. When completed each of the remaining two will mark the inner and outer ring boundaries. —Photosynthetic epidermis and six legs—
—When I get these rings in place— I snap. The moon isn't cooperating, its low orbit and Blue's mass adjustments making the process more complicated than it should be.
—I can help— he offers, —I'm just waiting for you—
I flash him the orbital calculations and a schematic of the planned rings. —Move that other moon, then—
—Coming—
A volcano spews ash and fire into the upper atmosphere.
—Stupid tectonics— mutters Blue. —Stupid stupid unstable disorderly lonely monstrous tectonics—
—Sorry— says Squeaky. He emerges from the clouds as though departing a steam chamber, trotting towards the second moon.
—We're trying to minimize the disruption— I add.
—Minimize more— Blue replies. Images of magma spilling out between his fingers flicker through the connection.
—Working— says Squeaky. He prods at the moon, clatters his mandibles, and then rolls an eye at me. We're managing the same area; he speaks aloud. "Mine isn't so tricky as yours. Should I start on the rings when I'm finished (smash up their holding-space and distribute)?"
"I'll do that. You should help Blue."
"Right."
"Concert," exhorts Swift-Runs. A massive arm coils from the outer reaches of the system, banded plates flexing gold.
—Do I concentrate too much on my monsters?— asks Squeaky as he tugs the moon outwards, —Swift-Runs says I concentrate too much on my monsters—
I blink at him. —Do you?—
Exasperation. Sorrow. —I like my monsters—
—I like my nebulae paintings—
—You like the collisions—
—You like the little legs—
He sighs. —It's so much fun watching the little legs—
"Concentrate," interrupts Swift-Runs. "Who requires assistance and where?"
"Blue," I reply. "With the tectonics."
—Perverse tectonics Swift-Runs must have weighted the probability counters stupid stupid—
Squeaky checks the last calculations. —Moon's in place. Blue, where do you need me?—
—South continent won't split. I need you to drive a row of accelerator wedges. Rings?—
—In-progress— I reply, relaying my plans for atomization and recombination. These will be uniform rings, five major and three hundred minor, tilted across the poles. As instructed.
Squeaky departs to join Blue in tormenting the world below. I step towards the ungainly mass of collected material, ice and rock smashed together with little regard for style or stability. To reduce, to destroy, to smear across the cosmos—
Not in reality. Not yet.
When we arrive, finally arrive, and we begin on our first project... then, then is when these gestures will have meaning. For now they are merely exercises. Exercises that the previous generation performed on actual worlds, actual stars, actual masses of rock and ice and metal. Exercises closed to us while we traverse the nothing-void.
Were this real, we would be wearing armor. The second marker of adulthood, granted at the beginning of one's first true project. A marker deferred.
Also: at project's completion the makers choose names.

Swift-Runs: You must concentrate, Stumpy. Feel it. Touch and listen and—
Dark-Star-Devouring-Binary-Suns-in-Bursts-of-Blinding-Hue-and-Pressure: That's fine advice, Swift-Runs, but whoever are you talking to?
Broad-Leaves: No, no, look at this example again. That's how you do it, Stumpy, that's how we—
Rippling-Currents-Threaded-Through-Layered-Stone-River-Frozen-in-Time: I don't know who this Stumpy is, but maybe he just wants to work?
Heat-Traces: That's wrong. It's all wrong. Start over, Stumpy.
Everything-Even-the-Universe-Explodes: Excuse me?

That last name, of course, would have been rather controversial.

Rings in place, monsters seeded, tectonics finally settled. The planet begins to cool.
We array ourselves before Swift-Runs, framed between ring and cloud. Sheets of particulate matter, a curtain of light, the skeleton of a rainbow. My work complete.
Our work complete, for the moment.
"A passable effort," says Swift-Runs, inlays glistening, "but always you forget: the universe wants to change. If you don't listen to its every creak and squall it will run away (keep running, overload, chain-reaction, disaster following disaster, must I mention the greatest disaster of all) and you will waste effort dragging it back to the way it should be. You must form your work. Mold it. Not fling the pieces every which way and hope it comes together. That is bad engineering and bad art. Heat-Traces is preparing a new simulation for you and this time the probability counters will not be so kind. Blue—"
—Swift-Kicks, more like— mutters the accused.
"No asides when I'm speaking to you (you are not so skilled yet). Your handling of the crust fragmentation was below standard and you know this. You will correct this in future and--” cruel word, laden with menace, “manage the same process on your own, without sibling assistance, at least three times in succession."
Blue lowers his head. "Yes, Swift-Runs."
Swift-Runs snaps his mandibles together, once, twice, in sharp emphasis. "You decry this form as a simple one. You must realize that even the most basic of patterns contains a hidden complexity, tones within tones (choir of a thousand voices, each voice produced by muscular distortion, charge differentials, circuit and synapse). The most basic of patterns is not simple." His eyes traverse us, narrow as knives. "Problems arise in the most banal of circumstances and then (then, then, we stand as witness) they grow."
We are duly reminded. We are always duly reminded.
What if we had worked harder? What if we had corrected flaws earlier? What if we had put into place the final perfection, halted expansion, halted entropy, halted time? Are children worth the price of loss?
We appreciate our existence.
"Stumpy," continues Swift-Runs, "while your completed portion follows all the rules of form, it is not finished. There are unacceptable flaws in its construction, flaws which will tear it asunder in less than two million years."
"This simulation was never specified as running for two million years," I point out. A useless assertion, but on behalf of myself and my siblings some explanation must be made. Why are we inept? Because we choose to be. We choose to be this way.
Swift-Runs closes his eyes. "You know very well that all simulations have no set time frame and that each structure is expected to last for eternity, given proper maintenance. You have not met this expectation and this indicates laziness. (Laziness and gross disregard for our teaching, as well as dismissal of our art as something fit for beasts. You must not do this. You will not do this)."
Must not. Will not. A command and an assumption that it will be followed; indeed, by all intent, has already been followed, with no further need to worry.
—Simulation time runs forever, just as all things run forever—
I copy Blue's posture, crests tilted low. "Yes, Swift-Runs."
So much for Everything-Even-The-Universe-Explodes.
It was a juvenile name, anyway.
—My turn— says Squeaky dejectedly. —Monsters. It's going to be about the monsters again—
Swift-Runs, as expected, levels his gaze on the last of us. "You, Squeaky, have shown more initiative than either of your siblings, assisting where needed and doing so ably. I've spoken to you before about your preoccupation with living creatures at the expense of the symphonic whole (many times). No need to remind you once again."
—What— says Blue.
I stare at Swift-Runs. —Congratulations?—
—But the monsters— wonders Squeaky, wilting in anticipation.
"During this simulation," continues Swift-Runs, seemingly oblivious to our reaction (although he and our other guardians possess a remarkable facility for noticing such things), "you acted flexibly, and, while never completing a form of your own, provided optimism and stability for your siblings. Failure is a matter of expectation: expecting success, and acting upon that success, brings rock to flower."
Squeaky joins me in supplication, unsure what else to do. "Yes, Swift-Runs."
—We did something right— I say, idea strange in my hearing. Not unwelcome, no, but unusual.
—We did do something right— agrees Blue.
Squeaky fights to control a chuckle. —Flower. He said flower. Had to remind me of the ones I've made—
—They were good flowers— I tell him, gracious in surprise. —They'll be better when they're real—
—Truth. Real flowers can be touched—