Our Or Boros

   photo montage by aleXander hirka - click on image to enlarge

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Our Or Boros ~ by T. Remington

     Cyrus doesn’t even open her mouth until she’s considered the consequences. How long? A year? A millennium? It’s all the same to Cyrus, still she’s not to keen to rush this. All is writhing chaos in every direction and the violence of erupting volcanoes and slamming tectonic plates have become a bit much. When she first twists around one full turn and brings all into existence, her first ever experience is one of delight. Well, look at this, would you?
    Clots of magnetically charged dust coalesce into masses that are pulled into globes that begin to spin in an intricate new dance, sort of but not quite obeying unacknowledged laws that confound even Cyrus. She floats amidst the new planets and marvels as some fire up into engines that emit light and heat, influencing the dance and complicating things for the dark globes, the ones that don’t spark into stars.
    Not one to see or even care about details, Cyrus is content to suspend herself and let the vast process do what it will. Small amusing frictions build up momentum and new levels of disruption arise and replicate themselves up and down the cosmic scale where there had once been endless dark and limitless silence. What is birth but a rending of matter? 
     Each planet convulses itself and each star punishes anything that strays too close. Brilliance and bombast and the unmoored screeching of split apart atoms racket along Cyrus’ elongated neural pathways and it becomes difficult to differentiate the creator from the created. Who’s running this show anyway?
    Cyrus becomes restless and irritated. Just as she focuses on a particularly lovely pillar of cloud that is jettisoning newly spun stars some comet comes ripping through asteroid fields, smashing and gathering at the same time.
    In vast concentric waves, this whole process is repeating itself with established stars casting unshadowed light for the new ones to attempt to ape and dark, shuddering planets to cluster about, confused and jockeying for good slots. At some far and unfathomable fringe, Cyrus’ turn has lost none of its ferocious energy. Inertia, not yet invited to the party, hasn’t yet asserted its indomitable sway and the chaos continues exploding in every direction.
    Cyrus begins to ponder what another turn, in the other direction, might set into motion. Can all this be reversed and, if so, does she really want that? Up through a valley created by the formation of two new solar systems, comes something new and utterly unexpected yet somehow tantalizingly familiar. Carelessly knocking the struggling solar systems out of kilter, Cyrus swings around in a large arc to investigate. Only recently has she become aware of her own form amidst the violence, none of which is more than a satisfying itch and all of which delineates where she ends and her creation begins.
    And so, what have we here? It’s deserving of serious investigation followed by long consideration of what to do next. As galaxies gain their foothold and the suggestions of gravity groove into shaky and constantly edited laws, Cyrus takes great delight in swimming around to bring that joyous tail into sight and then whipping it out in long, terrible sweeps that crush and reform trembling new star systems.
    At every other level of perception, what was happening is catastrophic. For Cyrus, it is all fun and games. Somewhere out there in some quickly dissipated pool of melting black methane ice, a frantic scream for help goes up. And then another. And another. A rising chorus of protest and supplication sifts up through the smashing convulsions. Even Cyrus begins to hear it and it grates terribly.
    In an attempt to evade the insistent whining, she takes to long cruises up and down and to the furthest frontiers of her majestically unfolding universe. But she only gets so far when the temptation of her tail returns and she finds herself doing long, lazy spins, admiring the grace and reaching to brush her face against the tip. Just as she’s on the cusp of some action, the shrieking of pre-sentient life finds her and off she goes again, violating all the struggling new laws of physics as she tears through the cosmos.
    It’s not that she gets tired exactly but boredom is truly universal and there comes a time when all this charging up and down and over and under just isn’t that much fun anymore. The demands of mitochondrial dna gathering in a hundred trillion patches of methane will not be denied. She slows at last and drifts for another several millennia, simply listening and observing. The laws that are trying to assert themselves are being constantly undermined by the inexorable push of all matter outward and in the midst of the maelstrom, the tiny and determined bits of what will become living, breathing, eating, fucking, shitting, lying, thinking, hunting, planning, designing, building, brick-laying, harvesting, needing, giving, warning, dancing, scratching, confusing beings strive to gain a foothold.
    As the whine crescendos up and withers down, Cyrus slides through the burgeoning universe in enormous circular spins, keeping that tail in sight and ponders an action that could have enormous and irreversible consequences.
    Then she simply stops thinking and reaches across the galaxies’ wide gap to firmly grasp her tail in her teeth. She doesn’t delicately nip the tip; no, she fills her stupendously huge mouth with miles of tail and clamps down tightly, holding it firmly and feeling every shudder and pull along the full length of her invisible and powerful form.
    In that moment, the cataclysmic expansion shudders into an elegant and neatly constructed dance of set actions and reactions. Whole new processes come into play and the stars’ rule becomes absolute, gravity gains traction and in some forgettable tiny crevice on a planet easing into a happy, dependable orbit, two small molecules join and stayed joined. Too late, Cyrus realizes her role now and can only spin into eternity, holding tightly to that tail lest all come undone.