Chapter 0: A Loser's Death and a Mother's Love

In a dirty, messy room, a young man lay on a blowup mattress. His eyes just stared into space contemplating both the paradox of existence itself, as well as whether his hunger was worth the effort of microwaving his last package of frozen tv-dinners. It was a chicken parmesan for $4.50. Not extravagant but it was juicy and warm, well it was warm if he had the patience to fully cook it, but he usually just cooked it till the outside was steaming but the inside still cold. Such was his sloth.

The boy had once been bright-eyed. Ambitious. He longed for truth, for wisdom and knowledge, for the answers to the despair that plagues humanity. It seemed that no matter how much or how little humans had, they could still be happy or miserable. So why was it so difficult for him to choose to be happy? It's only two options. It's such a simple question.

He tried to remember what it felt like to have ambition, to have energy, even just to give a damn. He had always been a failure. When he was eventually diagnosed with autism and schizophrenia, he received an explanation. Or was it an excuse? He could still succeed couldn't he? If he tried hard enough, if he worked out enough, studied enough. But it was too late for that. He knew it's a lie. It isn't too late, he's still young. More lies to tell himself. More excuses.

"Mommy... momma... moggy woo... mogoogie..."

For the first time since the funeral, he showed a hint of emotion. Water welling up in his dry, dehydrated eyes. The young man proceeded to open his laptop. Playing asmr and bdsm porn together to drown out anything real, anything that hurt, because everything hurt. The only person he had, the only person who loved him was gone. Everything else, real or not, was hell. But he wouldn't take himself out. He was afraid. Was he afraid? Or did he still have hope? That if he kept surviving at least, doing the bare minimum, someone might reach out a hand.

But he knows it won't happen. I have nothing to offer others. Even if I do they don't want it. He had long found the answers he sought. The nature of humans: chaos. The hope of humans: none. For humans were too chaotic, too religious, too emotional to handle the information age. There is too much input, too much decay, too much disparity. We all know it is true. But we don't want to revert. We would rather be miserable and well-fed, than happy but hungry sometimes. Than be fulfilled but have to work hard. Than love but have to face heartbreak.

Humans couldn't be the work of a deity, unless it was a malevolent deity purposefully creating such flawed beings. With such thoughts spiraling in his head, with gentle comforting whispers and crinkling sounds playing alongside sounds of moans, slaps, and climaxing shouts from his computer, the young man who hadn't slept for 3 days, passed out. Unfortunately he had failed to maintain even those most basic needs of survival.

Dehydration. Malnutrition. Grief. All his years of struggle? Or was it rampant debauchery and laziness... the two seem so similar these days. Either way, they had culminated in a heart attack finally claiming the man who had been decaying for so many years.

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The decrepit body of the young man appeared on an altar. he felt neither warm, nor cold, neither tired, nor restless. Merely existent. Changed. Something has changed. He had never existed before. He had merely been a force. To hurt those he loved. A force to capitulate to those he hated. To gain their approval. But now he finally existed. Needing not the approval of the ignorant masses, nor his father or brother.

He finally existed. And in so being, tears fell, sobs echoed in the hallowed space. Snot and tears messed the altar which had stood unsullied for untold ages. The winding paths covering the altar began to flow with tears and mucus. It seemed that in this new state, he had no need to rehydrate. There was no physical impediment to crying, and so he cried. For his beloved Mother. He did not care for anything else. And yet he hurt her so much. He relied on her so much. He had needed her so much. Even her death could not stop his need for her to hold him, to tell him he would be okay. He finally existed, and yet without her, his existence seemed to mean nothing.

The tears flowed upon the altar, as though across a topographical map. They swept through valleys, diverted by soaring hills and dripping into darkened trenches. His tears filled the rivers of the world upon the altar. His mucus, viscous as it was, formed lakes of lava, dried to form bogs of hardened wretch. For years he cried, until even the preservation of this new form could not sustain him. He cried began to cry blood, flowing throughout the rivers his blood cells flowing across this empty world of tears and mucus. Cells flooded the world, alive, but with nothing to build off of.

Until he ran out of blood. Tears, mucus, blood. He was empty. He was a husk. And so the dried husk of his body cried itself to dust, covering the altar in carbon, in amino acids, in blocks which would feed the cells. The man who unwittingly gave his everything, birthed a world upon this ancient altar.

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The Temple's overseer had stood his post for an eternity watching as souls would awake and pass through the doors of incarnation. Those who performed well, not by the judgement of any being or religion, but by the judgement of reality itself, became more than merely human. Only in the temples of the damned would humans be reborn as human. Those who were meaningless existences would be reborn here to be slaves for the rest of time. To serve those they had maligned in their past. To make up for ruining the lives of those who had earned their love and kindness.

He had never needed to leave his post. He heard weeping. That was nothing new. Beings often face despair upon knowing they have died. But this weeping was strange. It was as a song. Rising and falling, endlessly writhing echoes of despair. He could not identify the emotion behind it. Years went by and the weeping continued. He was not annoyed by it, nor was he entranced.

One day a woman descended from on high. She stated that a slave delegated to her had never appeared. She was a kindly woman. She did not speak of the slave angrily, nor with malice. Merely with longing. Not even death could destroy the mother within her. The kindliness which would take malice and in return give love and comfort. She was not capitulating. She was guilty, admittedly. Her child had been born to fail. By the time they realized he was broken, he had been shattered again and again beyond repair. She had cradled those shards of broken glass, uncaring for the pain it brought her. The broken glass baby did not mean to hurt her, it did not try to, but it's nature was to eviscerate those who touched it. If she had let go, the baby would not be able to hurt her. But her baby needed her and so she held him, in pain, until her dying day.

The woman was graceful. She was elegant. She was a Xhialdra. Reborn as a being of purity, she had no form. And yet she was there. She was beautiful. She was a paradox. She was as much an emotion as a physical existence. The buddhists would call her a bodhisattva. A being nearing harmony with reality, tethered only by her desire to exist, her desire to be with those she loved.

She eagerly awaited the day her son returned to her, she would call him a slave, for that is what he was in this world. But she would not treat him like one. He was her baby boy, and perhaps with an eternity, his being of broken glass could be reforged into someone capable of those innocent smiled she had seen in his childhood, before the dirty world broke him.

The overseer did not respond. Merely looking in the direction of the weeping temple. It had to be that one. The one reborn as flesh and blood for him sins, such that he may feel the pain he ran from in his former life.

The Mother heard the tears and smiled her nonexistent smile. She knew that cry. She knew the cry the overseer had never heard. It was the cry of a newborn baby, overlaid with the cry of her baby of broken glass. It was her son, whole as the day he was born. Her being flowed through the array of monuments to a disheveled crypt of a temple. It was him. Upon the altar lay a spirit, in form much the same as her own. He had shed his flesh and blood, he was only a spirit. And yet, so much more. She had birthed two children. But her baby had birthed a world. Fed by the spiritual essence of the netherworld, the source of magic, his body had terraformed the world beneath him. She saw millions of souls. She saw beautiful things. Her baby boy had created such a wonderful thing. She had observed much of the afterlife in waiting for him, but never had she seen such a place.

For it was unsullied by reality. It obeyed the laws of her son. It obeyed the laws of his reality. His soul was tethered to this world, granting a system to every person. The animals and monsters of this world were mere automata, they did not feel pain, they did not suffer. And the people who died would be reborn, to start anew.

Her broken baby boy had built this world that he had always wanted. And yet she felt a tinge of sadness. He built such a lovely world, and yet could not live in it. His state had become something of an automated system with no sense of self. But she could still see him. She was a spirit of the highest order, and she was his Mother, his moggie woo as he liked to call her. She would always find her baby boy. And deep inside his soul she saw him. innocent as the day he was born. He had given all his logic, all his rationality, to the system, he had given his emotions to the people, and had become a pure baby, with no more anger, no more sadness.

The others did not know why she could not ascend. But she did. It was guilt. Guilt for not being able to reforge her beloved child. But here he was, fresh as morning dew. She reached out to the baby and plucked it from the system.

A family. She found a marquis whom had only one wife and no mistresses. Troubled by infertility. This world may obey her son's reality, but there was no reality free from misfortune, humans, even by her son's creation, were still human and were still faulty. But with a touch of divinity she granted the couple a pregnancy. A perfectly healthy baby boy, with no disorders, forever protected from illness. Her baby had lived a whole life with sickness, she would not let that happen again. But she granted no special power, no special magic. Nor any special circumstances. Her baby was special enough as he was, she had always said he would do great things. She just didn't realize he would have to die in order to do them.

Live my baby boy, be happy, be healthy. You will always have a piece of Mother with you now, I will never leave you again. Comforted by her connection to her child, she returned to on high to be with her other loved ones. They had never cared much for her baby. But she loved them. For she loved all she loved, not because they did something special, but because she loved them.