Habitat For Humanity

At the risk of doing something completely stupid, I have decided to try WRITING. Surgeon General's warning: this is not what I am best at, but having been one of the poor saps who purchased and read Alice Borchardts books just because she was Anne Rice's sister, I assure you, there is worse out there..... Anyhoe, tallyhoe and off we go!

Once upon a Faerie Tale that you had to edit the fucking into, your species was not alone underneath the fishbowl you called 'Sky.' We were all born of the skyfathers, the humans, the beasts of the feild, the birds and fish and US. The Skyfathers were a combination of all things, though now your atrophied brains cannot imagine what your ancestors words have always described: Heads of lions, multiple sets of wings like birds and bats and insects, serpentine tails, eagle talons and intellects that put your geniuses to shame... Your scientists have already derived from their leftover bones the secret of their power--That the dinosaurs had two brains, two MINDS, working in perfect symbiosis. "He created them male and female together," the words your primitive ancestors left you in the scribbles you now call "Bible" also told the simple truth. Unfortunately you are not as intelligent as cavemen were and ascribe these words to describing malformations of genetailia, or perhaps conjoined twins, as you never did see the importance of the brain. That was why Our kind had to leave. You once called us "The good folk," "The fair ones," "angels" and "gods;" But you always hated us worse than hell, no matter how often we tried to help you. You had traded your second brain for what you had decreed to be a perfect physical body, though how an atrophied ape with the instincts of a cockroach equates to perfection, I shall never understand.... Be that as it may, it did make you excellent progenitors and left you as devoid of conscience as you would choose to be. You were quite horrible to each other, and it is so nice to see that your propensity for cruelty hasn't diminished over the centuries--I would hate to have to question the wisdom of the elder fey for having left you to your pitiable realm! I see you've poisoned your water soil AND air AND punctured a hole in your ozone layer--However did you manage that? It's quite an accomplishment to break the sky! You must accept my congratulations on such a bold and stupid endeavor--how on EARTH do you still breathe?

I've been living among you for a few decades now, though none of you know who or what I am. I have reason to believe some small percentage of you are still clever enough to sense something though, your actions have often implied the suspicion. No matter though, After all of your best efforts you have never managed to cause me any serious damage. I took the liberty of designing this body to withstand most human tortures, and if you would have managed to kill it I would have merely woken up, back home in Zamargados, and made a full recounting of the events I have had the misfortune of witnessing here. It truly breaks my little black hearts that this reconnaissance has been a failure. The initial plan was to seek out humans who were salvageable, to bring back to Zamargados. You see, over the centuries we have sent many of our students over to your realm--'Miracle Babies' you tend to call them, born of barren wombs to couples who would otherwise have no children of their own and thereby lose their place in the kingom of the monkey-roaches. Apparently there is no crime worse to humans than the failure to crap out litters of offspring in every corner of the globe and then treat them badly until they hate their parents enough to leave. I fail to see the logic, of course, but in a world where you believe you are on one of nine giant rocks that circle an explosion in space, where there is no inertia and yet this explosion doesn't push anything away, I have often failed to see logic. Really? Concentric circles of planets rounding a nuclear explosion like marbles on a record player? Well, you do share half of your genetic coding with cockroaches, quite literally, one cannot expect you to be smart. It's been eighty years since you figured out that automobile emissions are poisoning your air, fifty since you discovered that they were running out and god wasn't making any more for you just because you wanted it. Seventy eight years ago you discovered how to make hovercrafts that can run on batteries, carry just as many peopple, and run over pedestrians without injuring them since the downdrafts prevent the the victim from coming in contact with the propellor blades. Yet for some reason you still drive around with your cellphones and rescue inhalers squishing various species of mammal into red goopies on the pavement. If this is at all logical or intelligent, you people must be incredibly sadistic....

In a nightmare, I have grown up here. Of course you are sadistic, and now......... So am I.

For the past thirty nine years I have listened to your warnings about 'End Times.' Unheeded warnings about how you have been destroying your world and nobody cared. 1999, 6/6/06, 9/9/09, 12/21/2012--praying for a god to judge you--to save you and smite EVERYBODY else--a god who would see what nightmarish cruel and stupid beasts you had devolved into and still like you anyway--perhaps because you think yourselves cute, or sexy, or not too ugly--still doable?

"He created them,in his own image, male and female together." Gods are complete and whole they have no use for a race of halflings who would kill them and chase them from the sky. Sixteen billion years have passed in the manner that humans regulate time, and you are still essentially the same as you were when men were raping twelve-year-old virgins in the stench of tallow candles and then burning them at the stake. The only way a god might save you is in a jar of formaldehyde, for dissection and study in the hopes of finding a cure....

I understand that if you have actually read this far, you are probably offended--if you are not offended you are either in denial or accoustomed to monosyllabic words. Please allow me to explain. In the world I came from, Zamrgados, things are quite different. Cambions never learned how to experience joy while watching others suffer and always endeavored to provide a habitiat infused with liberty, justice, and empathy. According to our histories, our various races left your world at different periods in history, depending on the state of human affairs in the place at the time. As the Holy Roman Empire slaughtered billions of innocent people like stomping on an anthill, The Children of Astaroth gathered on the Island of Lemuria and shifted it--placing it in a slightly different timeline that was formed by a decision that was made in two different ways at once--humans chose bloodshed and cambions chose peace. They were inspired by what had happened centuries earlier when a man now called 'Adam' invented rape with his first wife, invented neglect with the second, finally settled on a third wife named 'Eve' and then let his kids kill each other. Other than that he was a fairly nice guy. His first two wives, Lilith and Juval were taken in by the Cambion tribe of Zamarchad who lived in sea caves that were similarily transposed into a divergent timeline. This time the abberation was formed by the decision as to whether or not to allow love and sex to be used as a weapon. Atlantis, Pompeii,Azatlan, Mictlan, etc. These were all once physical locations in your world where horrible crimes were enacted and those you shared the planet with were faced with the horrible realization that our tolerance of you was no longer in you best interests. It was time for us to leave.

Zamargados was formed between a myriad of pocket dimensions--little bubbles of space set slightly out of time, each respondent to the psionic abilities of its inhabitants, not unlike your world, but in ours we were capable of agreement. We reached out to each other, across time and space and drew our world together. The Sephirets grew and expanded, the skies fused together and the people's paths crossed. It might not have been perfect by human standards, since we wound up with five different suns and eleven different concepts of time. We wound up being immortal outside our own timestream, yet to us it seemed a normal life span. We are born knowing all we need to know, we age, we die and we are born again, but everybody else meets us when they are supposed to, usually in the prime of life or the prime of wisdom. Depending on how the timelines match up, you might meet a person every day for a thousand years and never see them age, but in their own timeline they may have died three times or it might be the same day--it is deemed impolite to ask about such things and we all have more important things to talk about anyway.... We are responsible for keeping the universes in balance. Back before the birth of Jesus Hominus Christos, we gave you a map of them that you now know as the "Quabbalistic Tree of Life." Back then there were only eleven,well, twelve counting Zamargados but we weren't about to let you know where THAT was. A new universe is born every time a human being makes a mistake that harms the entire world as they know it. I will leave the mathematics to you to figure out as well as the moralities, but I assure you the number of universes is now greater than eleven and they are all better places to live. You can be proud of the fact that your realm, once known as Malkuth or hell, was the original universe. Another universe was formed when people decided to build biodomes under the sea in order to solve the problems of homelessness and hunger--remember when you had the technology to do it and chose not to? Apparently it's easier to watch people freeze and starve than it is to allow a solution to be built. Atlantica was universe number 5,432. Maitland was universe number 4,986 and resulted from people deciding to build underground cities forty stories below the earth to provide homes for everyone--did you not think it was odd that NOBODY decided to try that here?

We are of course concerned about what might happen if you creatures do manage to destroy yourselves. Not only does it mean that the original timeline upon which all others are based might cease to exist- would your planetoid Pluto exist if you couldn't see it? Nobody knows if a plane of existence could exist without sentient creatures to bear witness to it. Once we find out about a plane, we witness it, thus creating a paradox that prevents us from seeing if it was actually there before anyone looked... If human beings have a purpose, it is to fuck up, and when they fuck up bad enough another universe is born, but if they destroy themselves that would, theoretically, make amends and negate the horrible actions that gave birth to the better hells to begin with. There are happy people out there. Brilliant people. Magickal people who can make three suns rise at once with a wave of their hand. On the positive side, if a paradox does destroy them they would never know. Their timelines would just be unwritten. On the negative side, your laws of physics decree that nothing is ever created or destroyed, and your species was intolerable enough the first time around--if it were to start all over again, it is actually theoreticall possible that your kind would fuck up all the fuckups just to prevent anything good from coming of them.....

Chapter I: Stranger Things

"Are you still talking to that thing?" Justin huffed as he descended into the room. The little Harpy-goblin halfbreed had met up with Gitchael sveral weeks ago when Gitch had been checking out the newest realm in the ethernet. Apparently it had arisen from the work of an innovative human author who had a large fanbase and had written at least seven of them into his books. It was probably an accident, of course. While it was still easy enough for humans to find out about their magic numbers, their population had grown so much that most of their magics didn't work. They had no way of knowing that if enough minds got together and dreamed of a better world they could make it happen. However, this particular author was quite remarkable as far as humans are concerned. The first human since L.Frank Baum to create a world that real, even if Xanth was already degenerating into an orgy on LSD..... Justin Icarius hadn't quite fit in there, but he had managed to flee after being homeless in Wisconsin for only three months, December, January and February....

Gitchell glared impatiently at the impish flying smurf who was currently leaving grimy footprints everywhere he landed,"Get off the biosphere, Imp! If you land on the wrong button you're going to let it out!"

"Prince Heritor, Perhaps I've only been in your world for a little while, but isn't keeping a person in a jar like a fruit fly kind of.....Humanoid?" Justin had an annoying habit of accidentally saying stupid little things that reeked of intelligence, which is why Gitch had invited him to stay in the palace. It also didn't hurt that Justin had been a human himself up until five yaers ago, and Gitch was the Gatekeeper--well, gateway--He was currently living in both worlds at the same time. Justin still needed help getting acclimated, and Gitch needed someone who could recognize and warn him when he started thinking too much like a human. This time however, Justin discovered that "calling him out on his crap" wasn't working...

"If you want me to let him out, you may want to take a moment and scan the repressed section of his mind. You've been here approximately ninety seconds and he's already developed some amazingly well illustrated ideas of thing he wants to DO to you..." Gitchell's eyes glowed red with mischief as he watched Justin's face assume a most mortified expression. "Did you actually read his mind or are you just guessing, kiddo? If you don't practice, your powers are always going to suck..."

"I scanned a little--You SAID 'scan' not 'read'--I only had to scan a little......" Justin resented Gitch talking to him like a kid. He silently reminded himself that Gitch was 5,627 years old by human standards and everybody seemed young to him by comparison. "Want me to practice my pyrokenesis?"

"Yes, of course but not on him. May I also remind you that you weren't old enough to legally drink when you transcended, and by the timeframe of this dimension, you are technically a three-yer old?" Gitch laughed and sent a playful swat in Justin's direction,"You might be able to scan minds but if you can't sheild yourself from others your life could get quite embarrassing here--especially if you continue to remember your time in a Human High School. I'd prefer it if the Lilin Sisters in the Valley never found out the definitiuon of the word 'Wedgie.' Please work on your blocking for all our sakes."

Justin directed several well aimed kicks at Gitch's head and a few of them even connected." Apparently I'm blocking SOMETHING or you'd be ducking more!!!" With a masterful twist of his body and murderous strain on his pectorals, he rocketed himself into the rafters before Gitch started shooting sparks at him. Gitch sucked at flying--he was awesome at crashing, but flying really was NOT his thing. These little sparring matches taught Justin more about magick than those lilins at the wizards school ever could--especially when it came to Gitchell's magic. Gitch could teleport in moments of extreme emotion, and if he could just annoy Gitch enough, he might get a chance to hear the incantation for fireballs again!

"Xango Nua'ah Jeke awon ouiku..."

There it was! "Ma ja Kiki Wa Olorun!" Justin felt and electric numbness go through his body, like the one he felt when flying only more intense as a ball of burning energy shot out of his chest and crashed into the glowing orb Gitch had just sent his way. They were both laughing like madmen when they could finally see again.

"You fluffy little Bastard!" Gitch sputtered as he tried to catch his breath,"Have you been annoying me just to steal my spells?" He was curled up on he floor with his tailfin under his head as his abdominal muscles spasmed and his cheeks began to burn. He was trying to appear angry, but the laughing fit was getting worse--especially since justin had just rolled right off the rafter and was plummetting with absolutely no grace. "EXCARPAY ENANTA!"Gichtell gasped, solidifying the air to catch him before he crashed into the stone floor.

"It seems I will have to annoy you a lot more if I'm going to learn. Honestly Gitch, you send me to a school with the most physically perfect Djinn teachers anyone has ever seen and expect me to pay attention?" Justin wriggled and flapped his wings, gently preening the feathers back into place--ruffled feathers were almost as uncomforatable as getting a tattoo, hundreds of tiny little pinpricks. It almost made one miss having a human body, if it weren't for how much human feet hurt...and the lower back... and hunger.....

"You're thinking too hard again, Justin, and No, I will not put the human out of it's misery--ever!" Gitch glanced back at the dejected human he'd been keeping in an earthlike environment. "Humans are all about misery. It is the only thing they seem to enjoy anymore--Martyrdom, the constant whining--even when they say that they are enjoying little pleasures like walks in the woods, what they really mean to say is 'May life is so devoid of joy that I look at dirt and weeds hoping to be happy.' They are such pathetic drama queens....." The human was male--at least they assumed it was--it had facial hair and a semi-visible bustline but that was probably just from lack of excercise. Nobody wanted to strip it to find out for sure to they mostly referred to the specimen as 'it.' Gitch was breaking a lot of rules by bringing it here and intending to release it back to where it came from. It had been tried before and been a disaster--we lost a prominent Prince Heritor and Wendy, Micheal and John killed a foul mouthed fairy and did horrible things to a few lost boys. "There are so many glorywhores on that pitiful mudball now that the stpry we're sending him back with will barely be noticed--Like those silly books that brought you here! They didn't bring EVERYBODY who read and liked them--not even all who could believe. These kinds of things are possible gateways, and believe me there are plenty of them out there. The only way anyone actually transcends is if that reality becomes too horrible for them to believe in."

"It certainly was that," Justin grumbled."It stopped making sense a long time ago, but I can't exactly say when. I worked myself to death, almost literally at some of those sawmills, and I just kept getting laid off from one job after another. A lot of those places closed down. I know there had to be hundreds of us living on the street like that, but we wouldn't even admit it to each other. If the cops found us they'd just drive us out five miles from nowhere and we'd have to walk back. It was a nightmare--we said that all the time! and after a while....."

"It was a nightmare. Nothing that was there is real anymore. Not as far as you are concerned--and you are concerned. If you weren't concerned I wouldn't be doing this, but we have to give them yet another gateway. The human has one of those phone things--an Obamaphone I think? It has a camera and a recording device, I'm not sure if the human can read, but we'll show him! He'll record it--if he tries to refuse I'll just electrocute him a little bit and sooner or later he will comply.... Obba Koso...." Sparks snapped and popped in the air around Gitch and the human in its habitat looked a bit uncomfortable as it hastily dug out the little plastic object and displayed it to us, smiling and nodding and making idiotic gestures as if they couldn't hear him through the glass. "Humanity's last hope..." Gitch muttered grimly, evincing no hope at all.