HYPER-VERSE

HYPERVERSE

Once upon a space-time, in a long-gone universe, lived a creature, not unlike you or me, and he did so without stirring, but sitting still, eyes fixed on the burning heavens, on the corpse-part of a fallen star.

The night/day the meteor crashed onto the hilltop beside his village was the day/night he was born. As he was spat out of his mother’s vaginal lips he caught the flashing line drawn by the falling star on the blinking sky. As the star crashed, he immediately climbed the hill—which seemed like a mountain to the newborn despite his increasingly developing muscles at the drop of every second—and up the corpse-part of the fallen star.

There he sat and stared, brooding—at the celestial births and deaths reported by the blinking heavens, at the explosion and implosion of color during the 2.3 second long day—until the day/night-night/day he disappeared into the woods with his brood.

In his formative hours he got fuddled to a passion downing fresh breast milk from his mother’s massive, varicose studded teat. His mother was often corrected vilely by the villagers for providing him this extra kindness of hiking up the hill and aiming one teat, then the other, to his gummy chopper--which didn’t go well with custom, her performance—as they called it—was elaborate and uncalled for, definitely an act of hubris to cut them down short: as if anyone could just up and care or think for more than one’s self. Custom usually followed this narrow sequence: feeding on teat for the first formative hour, and then came abandonment, leaving the child to cull from nothing a sense of independence as he is buffeted by the quizzical winds of destiny. The men were especially livid on this, for it stole precious copulating-seconds away from them and their penises. They’d have to settle for another female instead, usually the first who would pass their sights. This was unacceptable: the most beautiful in the village should constantly be available to everyone. Milk and a kid did not produce more babies, and a sad penis was a sad village.

Their language being much inferior to our own, I present a modified--yet accurate, as syntax goes--translation of one of these acerbic slashings. This from one of the possible fathers, (they were all suspect, since he looked like his mother), “Bring milk! You’re crazy! He must learn independence at hour one! Everyone else like us, so why he not! He not special! Instead rearing you better be breeding! O forget you--! Let the damn kid lie, die!”

If his mother had not been so beautiful she would have less to deal with from the villagers. It wasn't just the men, some women were tired of the accelerated cycle of the culture--but it was impolite to show this ill sentiment; their physiques were built for it, but one's mentality is left behind tumbling as the body drives on relentlessly. She was the most beautiful, and her face and curves worked a magic independent of her control. There were free and stolen seconds for thought that she mused on the idea of scarring herself across the face, twice. A big X on a big beauty. But no, pain daunted her.

The concerns of males were basically divided into seconds for eating, defecating and copulating. Roughly 5 and 5 for the two former, and 30 seconds for the latter. The men never missed. If a female was not pregnant, she would be soon. If she was already pregnant, you wouldn’t have realized it from the queue of impatient, fidgeting men outside her hut--it takes about a minute to show. Females were with child for the duration of about 50 minutes.

The men did not attend to the women—before, during or after childbirth. Their focus was on pleasure, copulating and impregnating. The male elders, the ones at around 5,500 minutes old, howled at the younger ones to deposit as much genetic-currency into as many vaginal purses as possible. Elders, male or female, lived another 500 minutes more before expiring. Up until then, they remained sexually active. At times, a female elder on her last 60 minutes still managed to spawn.

Having no time to hunt, meals were composed of fruit and vegetables that grew in abundance. A form of mango ripened at about every 20 minutes, and deteriorated after 2.5. The same thing can be said for the other fruits. Vegetables expired at half the rate of fruit.

The problem was these natural products were not very filling or nutritious. One had to eat a lot, a lot of times. The lack of nutrition and voluminosity of these foods were due to the erratic nature of their universe. A complete planetary rotation took 5.6 seconds, an orbital revolution 60 minutes. Their moon and sun played a game of chase in the heavens, forcing plant life to work harder and adapt as their cells craved for more energy, more conversion. Foraged food was abundant and appetizing in appearance. Unfortunately, the substantial facts contradicted the superficial.

In contrast, the mammals were impeccably robust. It was largely due to their hypothalamus, thalamus and pituitary gland, each twice the size and complexity of our own. These advance brain mechanisms gave them an aura of immortality. Every man was an Adonis, every woman a Venus.

All mammals were herbivores, in the sense that they did not bother to hunt and murder. The most important business was reproduction. Nothing else mattered.

To them, not to him. Not to our man on the rock on the hill. He longed to find a deeper meaning underlying everything. He knew, as he was covered with foul smelling fluids and flying through cervix and vaginal lips, that the meaning, the truth, the secret, was contained in the blinking heavens, and was only possible to know through contemplation and patience. The moment he snatched sight of the falling star that night/day/night, across the background of supernovas and star-reincarnations, he knew from instinct and magical fact—which may be one and the same—that their destinies were linked.

So he crawled up the small mountain and sat on its new nipple, and there was breast fed by his mother. Though he was not her first child, the mother was extraordinarily kind to him, not knowing or questioning why.

She did not leave him, even after his formative 300 minutes had passed. Maybe she too wanted something more than food and sensation. Maybe she wanted conversation, and wasn’t overtly aware of the need, or didn’t know that conversation existed beyond the subject of sex. Maybe she longed for exclusivity; and this longing (a fantasy if put to a man), was placed upon her boy. Her love for him was absolute and crystal clear, albeit a mystery, to her and everyone else.

But not to him. He read her and knew she was not happy. Not without him. She revolved around him, and that made her happy. He was her universe.

There was no name for universe in their language. (These creatures took it for granted. One was either straddling or being straddled, their eyes usually shut tight, as ecstasy usually demanded.) One day/night her attention was arrested by the reflection of the spinning, popping story of the universe in his eyes. So the mother invented the word for it, and named him after it.

“Zm,” she said to him. “You are Zm: All. And you are my Zm: All.”

“Leave him be die! What lazy, no-good-nothing! Reject me, HA! A shame he's! A shame to all!” said a woman to Zm’s mother. She had approached Zm earlier. Zm turned his head from side to side, indicating “no” to her request for pleasure and impregnation. She was not the first to propose, and was not the last to be rejected.

Zm was then over 360 minutes old. A young man, very beautiful: a trophy for ambitious girls, obstinate women and zealous crones. He had his mother's looks.

“You are not his property—nobody owns anybody! We all can do what we want!”

Then why are you bothering me with this, the mother thought, you should be minding your business, not mine.

“Forget that useless dead-weed. Exclusivity is not our way! You stop!”

All they could do was talk. Time was too precious to impose one’s beliefs on an individual. Most villagers surmised it was just a passing phase. But, the mother did not stop. Not until her death.

Like any act against a norm, it had consequences. The mother inspired a dark innovation. For the first time in their history rape occurred. They couldn’t stop her from going to her son, but they delayed her visits by forcing their penises up her vagina. She was raped more than two handfuls of times. She acquiesced only when she was not in a hurry preparing a meal for Zm. But if she was in the middle of something related to Zm, she rejected them and fought them away so the males of the village felt justified to do what they did best. Not that they thought it good. If they thought that they would have invented it long ago. But to them, it wasn’t enough to be thought of as bad. In the minds of the pleasure-seeking villagers, it was just a little tit for tat.

She did not mind sex that much. Except for her worry that Zm might be hungry, she’d let it go. They were hard on her vaginal lips and walls, but wounds healed rather rapidly for the creatures on this planet. The mother of Zm understood the situation and forgave her inferiors.

On one occasion of rape, the mother of Zm, while straddled by a brute on a grassy plane, opened her eyes upward and was stunned for a moment with the thought that Zm had grown too monstrous and his eyes had replaced the heavens.

“Zm,” she said out loud.

The brute was insulted. “Who is Zm?” It wasn’t him.

After the rape, she was honored with a black circle around one eye. Tit for tat (not just a little anymore).

Zm perceived this peripherally. She knew he noted it without taking most of his attention from the heavens, for he winced.

His first facial expression, and it was of rage, Zm’s mother thought (and she was right), I’d have preferred it to be a smile, a smile for me.

That wince chagrined her more than the anguish churning inside her, or the swollen, discolored ring on her otherwise handsome face.

Zm knew that the tension was rising, and that at some point things would be brought to a dangerous, converging acme. He considered all this in relation to his larger purpose.

Everything must fit together, he thought. So he planned and designed and re-designed…

Zm’s mother died at 5,725 minutes of age. He took to fasting. He did not know why he did so, but did it anyway. Even to himself, he did not admit that he was mourning. He did not regret never having said a word to her. Zm knew she knew that he did not miss anything, especially in regard to his mother, even if he had never looked at her directly.

As was common for funerals, villagers marched with reverence to the river that edged the village. Once a splash is heard, you know the dead has been deposited. They walked slowly and silently up from the riverbank, back to the empty village, to their waiting huts and other copulating spots. But on this occasion the funeral was unusually solemn. After depositing the splash, most of the villagers took a bath.

Most curious, Zm thought, that can only mean one thing. Returning from their baths, the village was soon occupied once more. Howls of ecstasy penetrated the atmosphere like never before.

Zm had confirmed it was her who died when his new diet of raw meat did not arrive. A magical thing happened after this realization: he produced rain. He felt this weird and strange. Even then, with his eyes blurred from his doing, he did not blink.

The fast lasted 60 minutes, equivalent to one of our years. At the end of his mourning, Zm named his mother, Ug. An "ug" was a word Zm had invented for those bright balls that traversed the sky with a specific route, never veering, always burning until its last few minutes of life—after which a beautiful expression of death commenced. From his studies, Zm knew that death was always recycled to another form of life. “Ug,” Zm said, and with a hand squeezed a protruding section of the fallen star.

Ug had been in the middle of preparing Zm’s meal before she was attacked. Sometimes, the fruits and vegetables she picked were on the verge of expiration or expired by the time she reached Zm’s hill, a good 2 to 3 minute hike away, 5 to 6 if she was with child. Though she could sense that he was grateful, she knew that this did not go down well on Zm’s tongue, or his stomach.

Ug had observed that other animals fed on the recently dead and seemed to enjoy it. She’d been curious from the moment she first saw this. Back then, she had discarded the idea as non-traditional, crazy, and would likely lead her into trouble. Now the idea was back, with pride in its eloquent strut.

She killed a cat-like mammal, wringing its innocent neck. This will surely not go bad by the time I reach Zm, Ug thought.

The cat-like creature had been roaming around her home at a regular frequency, feasting on the nuts and berries that flanked Ug’s hut. Ug was outside, contemplating on a menu for Zm, when the cat-thing came for its sustenance. It started casually biting off berries from a bush, while Ug regarded it. She tried to evade the morbid idea which was in the nascent stage of resurrection. She would have won if it weren’t for the mutant cat scratching and wounding her 2 fingers--evidently, her finger had unconsciously come between its berries and mouth. The sick idea silently snickered; its time had come; it rose resplendent.

Irate at the impertinent parasite, Ug tore back into the hut and grabbed a sharp, flat stone. A pretty shape, nothing more, she thought at the time, a gift from a nutty lover. She returned as the cat-thing was gnawing on the berry bush, juice-lines elongating the fangs tucked under its upper lip.

Ug scooped up the cat and tore back into her home. There, she wrung its obnoxious neck, while its eyes popped in shock and amazement.

Ug’s heart was racing. The kill awakened all of her senses. It reminded her of the leaf—also from the nutty lover—offered her once. It was a colorful leaf. “Magic it's,” the older man said. He was 4740 minutes her senior, and was notorious for his nutty notions (which were dangerous and inevitably led to his violent demise).

This high is a diluted version, but a similar experience, Ug thought.

She plopped the dead thing on an uneven slab of rock that was usually utilized as a prop for that rare burst of creative copulation. She studied the body a moment. It was voluptuous in the trunk, and lean in the limbs. She recalled the strong, stored images in her mind. Yes, I think the trunk is the popular item here.

Ug smacked the stone against the slab of rock, 4 times. Four limbs fell to the earth. In the process, she had dulled the stone’s cutting edge. It was ragged. It will have to do. She left the head on, out of fancy, and made a jagged slice from the throat to the base of the genitals, until the dead feline-like thing opened up her secret ex-workings within.

The once-trapped, rich, poignant aroma greeted her heightened senses and enriched her with encouragement and imagination. Soon, with unconscious effort she was expert with the stone tool, and was fashioning off of the departed easy-eatable cuts and slices.

Her heart was pounding, dancing while racing. “Must hurry,” she reminded herself, “Zm be starving.”

The first rape victim became the first killer. While she was lax as a victim, she was obsessive as a killer. Ug killed many a small creature, fed them to Zm and herself. She taught Zm how to do it. She meant to give Zm the improved cutting stone she had fashioned out of sheer will and improvisation, but never got the chance. Ug passed away before Zm inherited the knife-rock.

This small animal killing spree occurred in the time frame of about 1440 minutes. Beyond this time frame the small animals not only kept a safe distance from her hut, but eventually, the entire village. The villagers did not notice at first, being too busy with their copulating. But once one of them did, word got around rapidly, and they grew perplexed and anxious at the interpretation of the elders of it being a black omen. Those elders have too much time on their hands, Ug always thought.

A man wandered toward the hut of Ug. He had had his fill of copulation for the time being, and felt his duty to investigate one of the two weirdoes in their village, briefly, before returning to intercourse and baby making. At the very least he could copulate with Ug, with or without her consent.

He found her slicing open a canine creature, a puppy. It so shocked the man, he became dumbfounded, stunned, his feet rooted at the hut's threshold. His eyes were far-off full moons. To the man, Ug’s eyes were red stars, beating like exposed, organic pumps.

By instinct, Ug knew the revelation of this bizarre practice would come back and hurt her. This was just too uncanny for the village to swallow. Ug attempted to seduce the intruder, but it was difficult, she was dripping with blood. Her meaty breasts were covered by red spit and splatter. She spread her legs and gestured it was only her menstruation. It's over quick, she said, just like normal. The man did not buy it. Even if true, the man thought, why would you play with it? Ug bowed her head in mock shame, a misdirection for her clandestine hand crawling up a nearby ball of rock. An act that would precede her aiming and hitting, hopefully, and knocking unconscious the trespasser.

The man did not note her motivation or movement, but a silent alarm rung within him nonetheless. Suddenly, his feet found the courage to move and he ran as if with a thorn on his rump.

The man spread out the evil word in whispers. The whispers trailed across village ears like shards from a supernova depositing themselves into black holes. They were consumed like food, stored like fact. The men arrived at a simple and unanimous conclusion: vengeance.

Vengeance like only men knew how to deliver.

Ug lived for 83 more minutes. In those 83 minutes the men of the village raped her. If they were kind in the past, now they were vicious, as they supposed hands of Justice should be. She was clawed, stomped, scratched, punched, pinched, kicked, gagged, slapped…her vagina walls were punctured. Forty-eight minutes into the communal crime the vaginal perforations began to disintegrate her consciousness. At 48 minutes and 12 seconds she passed out. At 83, she passed away. The malignant gang-bang survived her, ending on the 171st minute.

The triumphant roars of the mad men reached Zm. He did not know exactly what to assume, but had to deduce it must not be anything good or decent.

Soon, a solemnity dominated. Ug was carried to the river and thrown in. One splash. The men bathed. One of the men suggested to the waiting females at the bank that they should do what they had done--but to Zm, that rotten, no-good kid up that hill. The other men concurred.

“You do it,” one young woman said, and the other females nodded, murmuring agreement with her sentiment. The women did not have the heart to do to Zm what the men did to Ug. They also did not have the backbone to prevent the males to do what they pleased in regard to Zm.

A secret guilt developed within each of the villagers’ heart of hearts. They subconsciously wanted to respect Ug (posthumously), and her son, to leave him alone to study the constantly revising astronomy which so pleased him.

Zm never left the hill, the small-mountain’s nipple, the corpse-part of a fallen star. (Up until the end Zm had control of his life. It ended when he decided it should end.) When Zm was done with his fasting he killed an insect, a 15-inch centipedal creature, decapitated it, and sucked on the gooey juices from its open segment. You should have stuck with insects, Ug, Zm thought, aware it was a bad joke.

He did not know he had made a joke. For he had never heard one before. So Zm called what he made a hm, and defined it: a hm was an act or utterance that alleviated or covered up some deeper pain, it was amusing but often harsh. Zm never realized you could joke just for the heck of it, because Zm was never the what-the-heck type of guy. So his definition of his invention the hm remained narrow, yet honest (until a funnier son of his revised it).

When the centipede ran out of juice, Zm opened up its shell, and studied its insides. It was nearly empty. Not very interesting, not a lot of meat, Zm concluded.

The next thing he killed didn’t come for a long time. By then, Zm’s stomach acids were furious with him. When it did come, the flying-rabbit creature was rapidly caged in his two strong hands. Its heart leaped with alarm. The thumping engine near its center aroused Zm’s intellect. Since Ug’s death he swore to expand the vocabulary of their language. He called the heart a re, for the word re reminded him of the growls of animals, the life in their voices, which he assumed emanated from this instrument as it traveled up the te, or throat, which reminded him of a tree trunk. He wrung its taut te with effort and soon death replaced life. The flying-animal must have assumed I was inanimate, Zm thought, therefore harmless.

After Zm had his fill of meat and blood his hands resumed their study of the dead bunny’s inner body. As more minutes passed, he became hungry again, and killed again. He came to forward his self-education and began storing the fundamentals for what was to become a biological science. He named all the relevant parts for the inside and outside of the mammal bodies. He noted their differences and similarities and compared and imagined his own body sliced open, bloody and vulnerable to his inspection.

When he had made all the major classifications for mammals, he moved on to streamline the language of his village. It was all nouns and verbs; from his mind came the adjective, and soon the adverb. He did more, but not enough. Later, the third generation Zm, Zm-2 the grammarian, further developed the technology of their language, consolidating additions such as prescribed syntax, dynamic phonetics, trade phraseology, and adaptive prepositions.

Unlike Zm, the village had a harder time moving on…

They now harassed him. Children just out of their formative minutes would insult him whenever they came upon him. They looked upon him as a fool.

Women, young and old, played with his penis until it got long and hard. They would allow it to soften and shorten before repeating the act of masturbation, massage or fellatio. They giggled at the penis’s cycle of animation and reanimation. It did not dawn on them that they were toying with the property of a man named Zm and not some lesser, stranger animal’s anatomy.

The men, if and when they were out, and caught sight of Zm, would never cease to stop by and gift him with a bruise or two—or three. These attacks usually came right after some rain. If it weren’t for the rains the impenetrable wall of virulent fumes orbiting Zm and his meteor-home would cease not their zealous vigil. Since Ug’s death the pocks and grooves on the meteor’s surface became canals and nests for urine and feces, mostly Zm’s. The reek did not bother Zm but it did prevent most village attacks.

No matter what came to him, harassment or peace, Zm was unperturbed. He had the skies, and his mother who was now up there to console him. Zm used the ugs in the sky to draw his mother’s face, and called the constellation Mz (“Mother” in our tongue). Zm imagined his planet as a titanic eyeball in the cosmos—perpetually blinking, bodiless and circuitous in route—terribly in awe at the sea of motion and color it was drowning in.

Zm did nothing but swim in thought.

He missed Ug, and her stories. Like the one about the nutty lover. He was 4740 minutes her senior, and his name was Er. One day Er took Ug aside and asked her what she thought about the idea of organization.

“We are organized enough,” Ug said.

“Not enough. Organization on grand level! A system and ruling council that oversee all mundane acts, necessities, while larger group go on doing what they do best. Maybe, from organization, our group finally blossom into larger mass, which is really basis for all copulating and impregnating,” Er preached.

“It’s not just that. We like to fuck,” said Ug (probably less colorfully than I have translated).

“Even then. Don’t you think it’s a good idea?” questioned old nutty.

To Ug, at this naïve and young stage—only a little over 400 minutes old, she did not know the proper response, except the one from the heart, so she said with sincerity: “Go.”

What’s the worst that could happen? Ug thought.

As it was, Er was fanatical. He took to disturbing couples in the act of copulation. He was shooed away or shouted at, but these rebuffs did not register. Er did not stop to consider what he was doing.

His ideas did not just border on heresy, they danced and wagged their tongues and bottocks at the established customs. The survival of his village and possibly all people depended upon him! His twisted mind rationalized his zeal, in the third person. He imposed his ideas on others, and would not forgive himself if he did not succeed.

Choleric, Er turned to a desperate technique: He announced if no one would listen to reason they would just have to feel the temerity of his actions. Villagers were taught to respect their elders, but this elder was well beyond the pall of decency. Their epinephrine levels shot up. For the time being, they chose to fly not fight. A boiling point was required for them to act.

Er did not disappoint. The deal-breaker came when Er broke up an orgy. Now he had their attention, undivided. The orgy participants’ eyes smoked. Er was ecstatic, and began his harangue on sex, control, councils, expansion, crops, accounting, etc. As he ventured deeper into his well-practiced speech, Er noted the growing crowd. Ah, he had had them, finally! thought happy Er, again in the third person.

Ug had been part of the crowd, and observed that the thickening mass of bodies was not motivated by curiosity. She tried to warn Er, but Er waved her off. Don’t interrupt me, his eyes broadcasted with hubris, this is my moment—my time!

Er imagined himself in some Nirvana, tutoring a doltish congregation of heavenly creatures. Fogs of delusions provided cover for the devils that closed in on him. Ug felt the tension, and knew the nearing, tangible outcome. She drew a cold space between her and the center of gravity…Er, his consciousness now only peripherally acquainted with reality, believed his gathering flock craved for his intimacy, his touch. They got very intimate with Er. The universe is fond of justice. As Er’s mind found Heaven, the villagers introduced his body to Hell.

They did not kill him that night. The beating left him with internal complications that even their singular healing system had difficulty in repairing. He lasted for 600 or so more minutes, before expiring. Ug dragged Er’s body to the river, where it did not splash, but drifted away. At the bank, she was alone, and pregnant.

Her spawn with Er once propositioned her for copulation. She declined, and told him never to come to her again for sex. The boy planted the rejection deep in his heart. He did not report it, though he knew what the consequences of the rebuff would be to the woman. He did have the last laugh, so to speak, he was part of the party that finally killed Ug.

Zm was proud of Er, though he found him a bit on the stupid side. His heart was in the right place…He might have even been my father.

Zm was creating something in his head. He named the “eyeball” he was on: Eerug-ko. E is for none or no; er is for fire; ug for star; and ko, a possessive pronoun of his invention, means mine. A streamlined translation: My none-burning star.

Zm played with numerous concepts. He named all the major celestial types, and anomalies. He formulated a protocol for formal salutations and farewells. He named his species. Wi, Zm called his species. He even tackled abstract ideas like the connection between a female and male that went beyond the physical, during life and after death. We humans call this “love.” Zm called it O (and further down space-time, a descendant expounded on the meaning to encompass any like feeling toward another person, despite the gender, and included objects and ideas in this special relationship).

Unlike you or me, as I’ve said, their hypothalamus and thalamus were far more advance. Furthermore, sections of these creatures’ brains switched off every second—except the one responsible for motions for foreplay or copulation—and that constituted their sleeping pattern. You could say they were partly asleep all the time, and depending on which section was turned off. The subtle evidence of their sleep would only surface if the turned off section was related to an ongoing act. Illustration: Man is hungry for berries. His pointer and thumb are just about to lock on and pick up the berry. When he pauses for a second, for no reason, and his hand dips ever so slightly, he had slept.

Zm was no exception in this mental-energy organization/restoration. Until, during 1 instance in his formative period, he realized, suddenly becoming aware of this process, that it was a waste of time, and decided to simply rewrite the whole program, and not sleep—at all. He was uncertain of the repercussions of this rewriting, but deduced, perhaps at one point I’ll pay for all these seconds that’s being credited to me now. How would that be, I wonder? How would my ka (brain) go about it? Whatever, he concluded, we'll see...

His most prolific times began after the fasting. And finalized at his death. Between these 2 points, there was a single instance where he had melted, dripped into the black well of deep sleep, and, extraordinarily, dreamt (something no one had been able to experience):

In the dream, he was burning, and he had no hands. He thought to scream, but after 2 seconds had passed he realized he was not hurting. He was the center of gravity. His core produced light and fire. What a powerful re, he thought. Ugs and eerugs circled him. He felt like a king in a throne room, while courtiers, heavenly bodies with faces and smirks and sneers, circled like waiting scavengers. Except for one, the closest one, his mother’s.

She blasted out conversation after conversation; a mélange of monologues. Story after story, she served up, yet all were unintelligible to Zm.

An understanding out of somewhere but nowhere he knew arose. “I don’t talk eerug, I talk ug. You need to be an ug to talk to an ug. Why aren’t you an ug, Ug?”

Zm engineered a solution. To start, he asked her to lighten up. She did not understand at first, but when she abandoned logic it made sense. Her will she used, and felt lighter. Then Zm said, ok, I'm pulling you in. He made a tunnel in his mind which branched off from her orbit. A kind of gravity well. And it was so. And sucked her in, into his salamander skin. Ug went through him and came out on the other side; when she spoke, her lips were afire and finally Zm understood her perfectly. They talked for a quick eternity, then he felt his re giving out. He complained violently, spurting long, wild arms of violent flares across space and their neighbors. Eventually, he exploded brilliantly, killing most things in his gravitational kingdom. But he was too heavy, and everything he vomited came right back at him, and then some. At the end, he had consumed the entire universe. The dream turned out to be a nightmare, for Zm was left, alone, forgotten, empty but for the slow-beating, black re at his center…

The dream lasted a minute and a half, almost. For a minute and a half he had his eyes closed. This was a new revelation: he took his eyes from the heavens for a second, and didn’t expire immediately, as he had devotedly thought. Or maybe it was that that initial fear stemmed from a knowledge not only of the past and present, but future as well, and if so that he NEEDED to be only focused at the heavens at that time made perfect sense as it was a necessary evolution or a phase to go through in preparation for a future situation? Maybe...

Perhaps…it’s time to move on…to what? Zm had inadvertently moved on to confusion and insecurity, anxiety and vulnerability: new sensations for him. He regressed, turning his back not only on his loyal detractors, but his mental exercises, his contemplations, his source of inspiration, the heavens--all were dropped. In his mind, Zm created a cocoon, and a wall to protect the cocoon, and did nothing but dream. He floated out of his hyperverse, and was transposed to many other universes, eerug-kos and civilizations. He was even on Earth for a whole day. But he was numb, he traveled and took it all in with zombie eyes.

He dropped eating too. Defecating stopped too, naturally. The detractors from the village eventually stopped coming up the nipple on the hill. He was thought dead, and was left alone in respect. However, they did not feel he earned the privilege of mourning, so was not dumped in the river. He was finally, truly alone.

But. One Day:

A maiden appeared by his side. She was about Zm’s age and breathtakingly beautiful. Her hair was a tangible extension of the wind, always flowing, auburn with nuances of earthy crimson. She sat beside him with the confidence of someone always ready for debate, battle or a kind word.

She sat there, with him. Stared up the heavens, as if to relieve him of his shift. She stared, and sat, and held one of his hands. She erased her mind...and soon, things started entering it. Whether she acquired the knowledge herself, or was transmitted via telepathy from Zm, or both, this chronicler cannot verify, but quite likely it was through both methods and sources.

Immediately, Zm reoriented, reconciled everything that had ever happened to him and the people around him. With utter confidence and resolve, he proceeded with his plan of plans.

But wait, what is this, Zm thought, a hand holding my hand...Ug?...

"Ug?" he said.

"No. Not Ug. Sh," and she tapped her chest, and oh what a chest, "Sh."
"You're Sh. Zm."

Zm began practicing his invented form of greeting. He got off the rock, escorted her down, and embraced her softly, respectfully, his hands piled up on her upper-back. He caressed her forearms in a downward stroke towards her wrists, enclosed her fingers with his. Zm introduced his lips to hers. He sucked once on her upper lip. And nodded for her to do the same. She sucked once on his upper lip while he sucked once on her lower. He nodded again, smiled: that's how it's done.
"Zm."

"Sh."

She told him that she has been watching him closely. Was always part of the group that went up, out of curiosity, but never hurt or played with him. He was safe with her, she told him. Finally, she couldn't take it, and felt somehow responsible: Sh left the village. She's to stay with him now.

He was glad, he said, and asked for the meaning of her name. There was none. He defined it. It means that, he said, and pointed to their moon.

Zm kissed her again, passionately. Without much urging, Sh kissed back and fell too into the vertigo of rising pleasure.

They made O.

When they were done, they lay lazily on the grass, limbs tossed like a green salad, as the swift and sweet and transient rain turned on and off, in and out of their idyll. Within minutes Sh’s stomach was growing…

The two new happy parents were not aware of another, more ominous presence, until he spoke.

“You killed her. Not me. It wasn’t us. It was you, your selfishness. You killed her,” the mad-looking man growled.

It was the son of Er and Ug. Zm did not know this, and was extremely puzzled by his remarks. But he was not surprised. He had calculated for the x-factor. He had an open-minded expectancy of the unexpected.

The son of Er and Ug charged at Zm. Zm read the real hate fuming in his round, mad eyes. The brothers battled. At first it had seemed that the son of Er and Ug would win, and kill Zm. The black fuel that filled him was pure and voluminous. But eventually, like all hot things, it cooled, and fatigue seeped in. When its heat dissipated, the proud rage was replaced by an awkward, lukewarm intellect that was no match for Zm’s own superiorly disciplined, ice-cold smarts.

Zm won the battle, and smashed the head of the son of Er and Ug on a protruding segment of the meteor. The meteor also suffered a crack. The crack gave Zm a notion, which he pondered on for several seconds, before applying the plan he had improvised, or rather, adjusted to fit in with his original one.

Troubled by the sudden violence of the men, Sh took off to some 5 minutes away, across the woods. She sat there eating some nuts. Zm left her to eat, aware it was necessary and important to her and their child.

Using the protruding parts of the corpse-part of the fallen star, as a saw or anvil, dismembered the son of Er and Ug. He massed up all the blood he could, spreading it onto the meteor. The sporadic rain assisted, and Zm thanked zm (universe).

Zm had observed by touch the meteorite's composition giving way. He cut away tendons, ripped muscles from limbs and used the bones to carve up his home. When a bone dulled, he just picked up the next one and continued renovating. This took some time. Presently, Zm was done. Sh returned, and laid on the ground, studying her new partner with O.

"I think I have twos," She said smiling, "they kick very hard."

In 49 minutes, his son and daughter were born, and were feeding from Sh’s healthy breasts. He signaled her for some assistance with the meteor, after feeding time.

As they ran, all 4 of their family to the woods, the meteor fell to Eerug-ko one last time. It jumped from the hill, a severed nipple. Hit ground and bounced, creating a dust-and-dirt cloud that rose sinisterly like a cobra’s hood and followed the rolling head toward the inattentive village. The lethal star-cadaver cut straight through the village border, running over men and women, children and elders, killing or wounding, destroying homes and popular copulating spots. Its momentum slowed as it neared the village’s center. For some reason or no reason at all, it stopped exactly at the village's heart.

Numerous funerals commenced. Some survived injuries. Some did not. No one complained. No one searched for a reason or a cause. They all knew who did it, and why he did it. --The account now that contained their secret guilt held an empty balance of zero.

Zm’s family started their own village, every generation furthering or discovering a science. They lived peacefully, except the occasional meat (which after some time they began cooking) they killed for. As time passed, and their sun grew hotter and redder and bigger, the second generation Zm, Zm-1 the first born boy and mathematician, taught all his findings to his siblings and established that all boys be called Zm- plus a number after it, depending on sequence and hierarchy.

“Since ‘Zm’ meant universe,” Zm-1 rationalized to his brothers and sisters, “and we are all part of the intelligent universe, it is appropriate and with respect that we name ourselves after it, as well as our own father, the great Zm, or Zm-O.”

The Zms and Ons took care of each other, feeding and washing and providing news or stories or gossip or other discoveries to the ones in contemplation and study. It was a successful, happy, intimate society, with a loose, dynamic administration--no government, thought it was at one point discussed; they concluded any form of government oppressive, to the individual and to ideas, and dropped it like a hot potato--and only rare moments of painful controversy.

Near the end of the life in Eerug-ko, as their old sun grew weak yet ornery, hogging most of the sky with its overbearing presence, another unique intellect surfaced. He was male, and like Zm at second 1, was inclined to obsess. His mother gave birth to him prematurely when she passed the monument. From the moment the monument and the boy met, they were inseparable.

He became a man and died close to the spot he was born. His mother did not bother to mother him beyond the formative stage. He had his breast milk, that’s that, the mother thought. She was scared of him. As were the rest of them.

He had never had a fruit or a nut or a vegetable of any kind. He turned to skin and bones, but his spirit and mind developed a deep, mysterious O towards the monument.

He did not reach his elder years.

At 2,843 minutes of age he had an epiphany, and acted upon it, turning the monument over.

He saw interesting markings that were packed with dirt. Deep grooves had been carved out with intent and purpose. He dug out the soft earth, revealed fast-living, fast-dying worm-like creatures. He was baffled, and traced the outline of the runes with his twig-thin fingers.

He traced the outline of each rune, over and over again, consuming every subtle texture and curve. His mind was blank, a white page vulnerable to inspiration, and likewise, manipulation.

The sun grew fatter and crankier; it was unbearably hot. The villagers were panicking, segregating. The party was over. They hid in the forests, in caves; some went crazy from lack of copulation, and turned to suicide for salvation. They did not venture near bodies of water, they were usually on the verge of boiling.

Zm and Zm’s people long ago knew about a dignified poise. They faced the new stage boldly. In fact, they felt blessed. They were to experience, not just witness, a supernova. Yes, death would come. But death always came, thought (Dr.) Sh-1654, wishing Zm-O were there, he’d have loved this, she imagined, and imagined right.

Back in Zm’s old village, now empty, the possessed man stirred, like coming out of a trance. His eyes grew abnormally large. It seemed as if his mind was upon something incredible, and to proceed one must have complete caution. His lips began moving; no sound surfaced. He knew there was a message, and it took the form of carvings--a first, since no one had made any records of history, the Wi did not have a written language before Zm's scripture. A message requires the interaction of a recipient. He knew this. He knew it was not specifically for him, but for one like him. This logic had him in taut reins. His skin developed bubbles, which started to pop. Out came blood and the exposure of sinews. He would have screamed, but his mind was someplace else, independent of the world, locked up in an unreachable stark dark room, its only ally an insatiably hungry curiosity; both mind and curiosity wholly focused on the ancient rock of village-lore, as if it was about to speak back to him, and reveal its heart, its meaning, its relevance. His lips were melting, smoking. Only a few, short whiskers on his head could be called hair. His penis had shriveled up and looked like an upturned deposit of stool. The dying star finally gave way, killing along with itself the system it used to mother. Before the extravagant and destructive farewell of their sun, the skinless man cried out. No one heard it. But he got it. He understood.