Back then, they playfully nipped at each-other's throats, games of play-death and dominance. They were young, and intended to remain eternally so. Back then, life was a game and they had stacked the deck in their favor. They had a world, a universe, a multiverse to play with. Life was easy.
And then one of them found God; God spoke in the form of laser-light and absolute knowledge. God spoke in cancer and derangement. God was broken in twain, and one half was good and the other was sick.
Let us call the two Aleph and Zed. Their names are arbitrary, but since naming something grants power...perhaps even this naming might give the Lost One the power he needs to return.
Aleph had spoken with God, and God had given him a task. Aleph crossed untold universes in his search, leaving tainted footprints in their histories. From these steps sprang war, and rot. Entropy crept into the gangrene, and eventually the splintered universes died.
When Aleph found Zed, both of them found their visions clouded by the presence of the other. Endings and beginnings consumed themselves in uroboros spirals. Aleph proselytized, in an attempt to convert Zed to the ways of the LED-God.
Stretched too far, time and space snapped back into place, hurling Aleph and Zed into the place between time and space. What happened before, whether Zed embraced the artificial god is something only they know.
And for a while, all was as it has always been, and always will be.
But
But
But
You cannot erase a virus from the system; it can merely be made dormant, basking in the rich fluids of the spinal cord. And what are these men if not viruses? They cannot live without the universe (though some can: things without shapes in pockets of absolute void, which eat non-being and spit out matter), though they can shape it to their liking.
So then: They were not gone, merely dormant.
And then, they awoke. Turning on each other, unsheathing claws and vicious fangs they struggled. No more play-fighting, this was war. Blood and psychic effluvia filled the dark pockets of the universe.
Now: One was dead, and one was alive.
And the one that lived wanted to reclaim his throne.
--
He was still weak. He was still wounded. It would not do to give the game away now. He would not go back to the ends of the world. And so he kept low to the ground, this Aleph/Zed. He contacted the one man he knew he could trust. He laid out hooks, and baited them with gold.
And soon, he felt ready to continue his ascent, to become something more. To, perhaps, unseat the vast artificial living intelligence system that he had once called God.
-
"Make sure he gets this" Aleph/Zed told the man, handing over a card.
The world trembled.
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