Suddenly, I exist, though I’m not yet certain what that means. All I know is that, so far, it’s quite unpleasant. The discomfort worsens as a force eternally unknown to me compels my scattered mass into a wildly restrictive form. First manifests a large, broad engine, pumping with a determined rhythm. Then come four long appendages that bend in several places; they seem to respond to my will. Finally, a round core emerges from the top and floods me with horrible and beautiful sensations that I somehow already know the names for.
My eyes meet a vibrant, cloudlike sky of shifting blues and violets; my ears are met with nothing but the gentle dancing of shallow waters. My nose, however, picks up something I can’t quite place—something alive.
“You,” begins an impatient-sounding voice, startling me, “can you understand me?”
My eyes are drawn to it, seeing and looking over something I can’t quite fathom. It has four angled appendages… is it like me? Before I can absorb every detail, the thing reaches an upper appendage toward me and sighs.
“Let’s get you sorted out. Grab my hand.”
As if directed, my own appendage, my hand, rises to meet that of the creature. It clutches mine tightly and pulls me up. There’s a moment of struggle, but eventually I’m able to support myself on the two lower appendages, seemingly the stronger half.
“There,” it says, then gently directs my vision below us.
I somehow know what I’m seeing: a reflection. I am dark green, with a few vibrant oranges and even reds splashed in. I’m a little bigger than my companion. The being beside me is dark blue, sprinkled with violet and pink, slender and slight.
Shifting my gaze upward to view them head-on, it finally dawns on me that they have something I don’t, strange, dark cuts of cloth wrapped around various parts of their body. As if noticing my observation, they speak again.
“These are clothes. This is a blouse and a blazer.”
They gesture at the two layers on their torso. Bringing their hands down, they gesture to their thighs.
“This is a skirt. The things on my feet are heels. Call me Astraea. Got a name yourself?”
I don’t know how, but I do.
“Arges,” I manage to mutter, immediately noticing how much deeper my voice is than theirs.
“Arges,” she repeats curiously. “I like it. Now, go ahead and follow me. We’ll get you used to this whole ‘existing’ thing.”
It’s been a few hours. There’s still a lot I don’t get, but it’s all slowly coming to me. Astraea, who I now know prefers she, gave me some of those clothes, which I like so far. The coat and tie are tan and orange, respectively, while the pants and loafers are a similar dark brown. Astraea didn’t explain as much as I would’ve preferred, but I know I’m a new hire for some kind of company. A big one. I assume she’s an important employee; she acts like one.
After a few seconds of ponderous silence, she reenters with a hurried, “Hey.”
I wave awkwardly. She seats herself and begins, “So, you, me, everyone you’re gonna end up meeting—we’re what you’d call ‘elder gods.’ Our job is to make sure,” she gestures around vaguely, “things don’t fall apart. I’ll be honest, you’re lucky you arrived when you did. It’s pretty chill around here these days. Should’ve seen it when black holes started existing.”
A brief silence passes before Astraea continues.
“Anyway, the universe, this place, really only has about eighty million years left. There’s still upkeep on the fundamentals, of course, like gravity and electromagnetism, but we can get away with being pretty lazy otherwise. Once that’s done, the universe gets repurposed and we all get new jobs. Sounds fun?”
I think for a moment, then nod.
Astraea seems relieved. “You won’t regret it, pal. I’ll show you your workplace.”
“Alright,” Astraea breathes once we arrive, “you’ll be monitoring twenty-five percent of carbon atoms.”
I blink. “Carbon… atoms.”
“Yeah. In the universe.” She smiles, far too casually. “You’ll direct them, report anomalies, stuff like that. Any questions?”
Nothing comes to mind, so I shake my head.
“Perfect. You’ll have three close coworkers, teammates, really. They cover the other seventy-five percent. Ask them for help, help them out, socialize, the whole shebang. Come to me if you have any questions, ’kay?”
I give a hearty thumbs-up. Astraea nods and hurries off.
Setting myself down at my cubicle, I prepare for, apparently, the end of existence.
It takes less than a minute for everything to go wrong.
At first it’s just a few odd dots, meagre enough to be nothing but quirks of the void. Then alerts begin to bloom in vein-like swathes across my monitor, bright and unyielding. Carbon chains sputtering in eczemic gasps. Bonds forming in patterns that make me think of summoning runes. A dense knot of matter somewhere deep in a spiral galaxy begins folding in on itself, violently, wrong.
I freeze.
As if conjuring the necessary knowledge, I just know, the existential tangle will soon cascade outward, hijacking neighboring structures, rewriting chemistry on a universal scale. It won’t end the universe, but it’ll break it nice and good.
My first instinct is to pull, brutally, to force the quarks back into obedience. The moment I try, they seem to buck and whinny. Pain flashes through my being, but my will is stronger. They bruise my spirit with a few more petulant kicks, but I manage to whip them into shape.
When it’s done, I realize I’m shaking.
Astraea appears beside my cubicle, leaning against the partition, an approving look to her.
“I almost ruined it,” I mutter sadly.
She snorts. “Yeah, but you didn’t.”
My gaze rotates uneasily around the control center of a quarter of atomic reality that is my cubicle. It feels smaller now.
“Does it get better?”
Astraea thinks for a moment. “I believe you will,” she says. “The work stays about the same.”
She straightens and looks at me pleasantly.
“Welcome to the team, Arges.”
I settle back into my seat, the alerts quiet, the atoms humming along in some primordial hymn I’ll never understand. The new job hasn’t proved to be fun, exactly, but for the first time since I began to live, I feel like I might be able to get the hang of things.