Mark Chadbourn - Destroyer of Worlds

In the colours, any sense of time passing was lost. It could have been five minutes or an hour when he heard a voice saying, 'What is the point of the world?' It was the same voice Church had thought came from deep in his head when he had the impression of lying on a table, but now it appeared to be coming from all around him.

'Where is the meaning in life?' the voice continued.

'Who are you?' Church asked.

'What is real?'

'You don't sound like Tom, but you've mastered his degree of irritation, ' Church muttered.

'These are the only important questions,' the voice said. 'Once you consider them, all else flows from them. The answers may seem impossible to find, but it is the same as with any story: the author embeds keys in the text to help the careful reader decipher the true meaning. The rules that apply to the tiniest thing also apply to the greatest. The flower dies, but grows back the next season. Energy cannot be destroyed; it simply changes shape. What does this say for death? And is man a random collection of atoms, like a tree, or a rock, even though his nature is so very different from everything else in the world? In that nature, the key is writ large for all to see if they will only look. The nature of a being is the purpose of a being. If man has the capacity to find meaning, then there is meaning to find.'

'Is this for my benefit, or is everybody getting the travelogue?' Church recognised a quality to the voice; once again it appeared to be coming from within his head.

'Is reality a model of a town laid out on a table-top, with each house representing an adjoining world? Is each world a school for souls as John Hicks proposed, and as it was taught to the Knights Templar in the Fortress of Salisbury? How is a world created? By a powerful being? A god? Or in the head of a man, lying on a table, in the last seconds of his life?'

Church flinched. 'What are you saying? That all this is my dying dream? That it's all meaningless?'

'And so I return to the three questions: what is the point of the world? What is the meaning in life? What is real?'

Church fought his annoyance at the barrage of questions and considered them for a moment. 'A long time ago, I was told that I couldn't be given all the answers — I had to earn them, because only by doing that would I become the person able to utilise that information. Is this part of that? More teaching, but work out the damn answers for myself?'

He walked on a few paces in ringing silence, and then the voice said, 'Nothing is fixed in the Fixed Lands. Everything is fluid.'

'Yes, I changed reality. I brought Tom and Niamh back.' What is real? he thought. He made a new reality. And then: energy cannot be destroyed; it simply changes shape.

Other voices began to echo all around, some familiar, some unrecognised. 'We are all stars.' That sounded to him like Niamh. 'Love turns Fragile Creatures into gods.' Niamh again.

'So this is a puzzle?' he said, before adding, 'Everything I've been through is a puzzle, right? Like those complex traps that guarded the four great artefacts — the Sword, the Spear, the Cauldron, the Stone. We had to solve them before we got our reward.' The rules that apply to the tiniest thing apply to the greatest. 'So the keys are embedded in the text of life. Of my life. There's another story behind everything I've been experiencing.'

The colours shifted, and for the briefest moment he felt as if he was in a room with opposing mirrors so there were images of him reaching out to infinity; yet each was slightly different — in dress, or in whatever action they were engaged in. It was swallowed up by another flash of him, lying on the table.

'What is real?' he muttered again. 'What is real is what's on the inside, not what's around us. That's where the truth lies, where the meaning can be found. Is that what you're saying? We can create our own realities, which are as real as what we perceive to be real around us. We are all stars. We are all gods. So we don't look to the world for answers, because it's fake… and it's real at the same time. It's just… not important. We look inside.'

A transcendental sense of revelation overwhelmed him, and while he still couldn't grasp the immensity of what he was discovering, he was sure there was enough there for him to piece it together later.

He was rocked from his contemplation by the sound of running feet. Out of the colours emerged his time-looping double that he had first witnessed in Edinburgh and most recently in the Great Pyramid in Cairo.

As on their previous encounters, the future-Church wasn't shocked to come into contact with his old self. 'Is this it?' he said. 'Is this the right time? You have to listen to me. This is a warning.' Confused, he looked around. 'Is this the right place? Am I too late?'

Frustrated, Church said to his future-self, 'You're not giving me enough information,' even though he knew his double was locked in some constantly repeating cycle in the Warp Zone that made him appear at various points in Church's life.

'When you're in Otherworld and they call, heed it right away. They're going to bring him back. They're-' The future-Church became gripped with fear. In panic, he yelled, 'Too late!' and raced away into the colours.

For the first time, the double was close to his current appearance, suggesting that whatever point he originated at was in the near future. 'Okay,' he said to himself, 'when they call, I'll heed it. And then we'll sort out whatever's scaring you, all right?'

Church had a brief sense that someone else was nearby. He considered waiting to see what would turn up until some deep-seated instinct warned him to keep moving. Breaking into a jog, the colours streamed by him.

Am I dying? he thought. Is this just some reality I've created to soothe myself in my last moments?

'That question is not important. Remember the three questions. They are all.'

Church was surprised to hear the voice answering him directly for the first time. Before he could respond, the colours around him began to thin and he saw that he was, finally, running into the world.

The voice floated to him one final time, barely audible, and he realised it was his own voice. 'Good luck.' It faded away with the colours, and then he was jogging through a thin mist and out into a balmy summer night.

Grass lay beneath his feet, and there were trees nearby silhouetted against a sky alive with thousands of stars and a butterscotch moon, full and round, that lit up the field as if it were day. Church came to a halt and filled his lungs with the rich, cool countryside air, revelling in the aromas of hedge and field. As he looked up at the great chamber of the night, he felt an overwhelming sense of peace.

Home.

In a way he couldn't quite understand, every sensation that came to him in that beautiful evening setting reinforced what the voice had told him. His unconscious mind made connections that waited to reveal themselves. Fireflies glinted in the long grass, and as he looked out across the rolling countryside to where the lights of villages glittered, he heard the haunting call of an owl nearby. Here was everything he ever needed, every answer.

The scent of woodsmoke on the wind disrupted his reverie, and he turned to glimpse the flicker of a campfire in the middle of a dense copse. The soft buzz of amiable conversation drifted through the night, and by the time he pushed his way through the trees he knew what he would find.

Sitting around the campfire on which a spit-rabbit was slowly being turned were all the others. Ruth jumped up the minute he stepped into the circle of warm light and hugged him tightly.

'We were starting to worry you were gone for good,' she said.

Church caught the brief shadow crossing Veitch's face at Ruth's show of emotion, but he quickly flashed an honest grin.