Chapter 1: I’ve Made a Mistake

Oh thank goodness! You’re willing to listen.

Make yourself comfortable. Do you want tea? No?

Rather impatient aren’t you?

Alright, alright, keep your hair on!

Ahem, let me tell you a little secret.

I once saw a human.

No, don’t look at me like that.

Sit down.

Sit.

Good.

Now listen, I will start at the beginning.

Professor Alicat Alimony’s book on the Bizarre Book of Beastly Brethren: A Believable Bestiary is one of the only books in existence that mentions humans in a manner that is close to the truth.

Tucked away in a paragraph about one-third of the way in, the book lists some of the more alluring features of a human:

“Be touched by one and be healed. Hold a lock of hair and have boundless luck. Drink a human’s blood and become immortal.”

The book speaks a lot about humans.

It talks about how humans are mythical creatures, almost present in every culture. How they are majestic in appearance, similar to elves but with features close to the essence of the world. It speaks of their rounded worldly ears that frame innocent eyes filled with the fundamental knowledge of the universe.

Yes, humans are creatures that have boundless potential.

The fairies admired their masterful craftsmanship.

The bestial acknowledged their tenacious will.

The draconic revered their technological power.

The monstrous worshipped their limitless knowledge.

The undead thirsted for their ardent life.

The mythical lusted for their exceeding corporeality.

And they all would envy, except…

Why be envious of a myth?

You see, humans do not exist in this world.

Humans aren’t real.

And even if they were, would being a human be a good thing?

No.

What a wretched existence to live being hunted down! Humans were not magical. They were not crafty like the fairies or strong like the bestial, nor were they mighty like the mythical or imposing like the demons.

No!

The humans were said to be gentle creatures of the land.

Untouched by magic, and the terrible corrupting influence of power, they say they live peaceful lives in kingdoms of whimsical spires made of steel and glass filled with wondrous inventions of their own making.

They can fly, travel fast and were lively and intelligent beyond measure… all without magic.

How mysterious. How mystical. How marvellous!

So it really was unfortunate for that young human walking home.

It wasn’t his fault, really...

You could blame it on the Registry.

Let me explain.

Deep in the twisting eddies and pools of Time, there is a strange island among the writhing temporal mass that flows from the Beginning to the End.

This island houses many important things. Among those things was The Registry of Mortals.

The Registry of Mortals were a vast bibliographic collection built on top of a charged star. The star themselves not charged with energy or matter, but rather the boundless potential of creation. So whilst the star’s surface seemed placid, it was inimical to all forms of life, including the dwellers that lived precariously as amorphous blobs in the structure above.

Secant was one of these amorphous dwellers. Dwellers did not really have a gender but they did have preferences. If one were to be assigned to Secant then female would be most preferable.

Secant drifted through the entrance to the Registry, nodding to the stoic guardian at the door. It looked like it was made of smooth metal and it floated serenely above a pool of metallic liquid that appeared to shift in colour every so often.

“Hello,” she said in greeting, intending to be polite.

The guardian didn’t respond. It never did. It just stood there as if it was a statue. Secant wobbled nervously as she moved past it. Her co-workers never paid it heed but she had seen it move before. An intruder had once tried to enter the Registry.

If Secant had shoulders she would have hunched them.

Like most of the dwellers on the charged star, Secant was one of the caretakers of the Registry. She was still working—unlike most dwellers—managing her little niche in the Registry in an attentive manner.

As she moved towards her workstation light from the floor below illuminated the path ahead. The glow lit her corporeal container with an eerie blue palette. Secant weaved through the empty desks and chairs that littered the hall, making haste.

There was a lot of work to be done. It was so busy!

At least, it had been… for the first millennia or two. Now they just looked busy until the Auditor left.

Though she would never have done so before, Secant now questioned the existence of the Registry. Why was a library that merely catalogued the lives of the infinite number of mortals so important? It boggled the mind that the Registry’s shelves had to bend back in ten-dimensions, just so all the records would fit!

Secant was not the only one concerned with the Registry.

After all, no one had visited the Registry for at least a thousand years.

Secant sensed other dwellers, but didn’t reach out to them. She recognised almost every other dweller that floated past. That was Metric, he chose a container that was more like an oozing blob. Beyond was Tangent, she chose a small thing that could fly… or was it called a fly?

Secant had tried to drum up conversation, but after the first few thousand years, she stopped trying.

Many had relaxed their dress code over the countless lax years. Some had even started to wear mortal clothing and had abandoned their containers of unrealised potential for something with more substance. Secant, being a curious little dweller, had tried ‘clothes’ from time to time. It was a curious thing but she hardly liked them and so stuck with her regular regulation appearance.

Where before the hallways were pristine, Secant now saw slight cracks here and there and the odd little worn surfaces. Dwellers used to be so full of energy and purpose now drifted slowly… if at all.

Secant had begun to worry.

Before, superior beings would often drop in and demand Amendments. A note here, a scribble there, and a life drastically changed. Secant hoped it was all for the better. She hoped. She didn’t dare question the decisions superior beings made. Questioning came with unbearable consequences. So Secant was happy overseeing the volumes and tending to the records that housed uncountable lives within them and sticking to that job only.

So when she found herself face-to-face with a massive heavy-set stellar-dweller, surprise was not even close to the emotion she experienced. One moment she had been floating along and the next, this superior being had appeared directly in front of her!

And when the dweller addressed her with absolute Authority, her lingering surprise turned into hesitant fear.

Had she done something wrong?

This dweller wasn’t any regular being. It was a superior being known as an Enforcer.

“Dweller.” It addressed her with an imposing presence. “What is it that you go by?”

Shocked, the poor amorphous blob almost leaked out of her container. Secant almost didn’t recognise what it was asking of her. She hadn’t had a conversation since—Wait, she should answer! What was it asking for? Right! Her name! She frantically gathered her scattered wits.

“S-Secant, sir,” she hastily replied.

The Enforcer was a towering giant of almost three magnitudes of spiritual height. It glared at her. Helplessly, Secant shook under his ferocious gaze. Eventually, in what seemed like an eternity, the Enforcer withdrew his critical gaze and nodded thoughtfully. Usually, Secant wouldn’t be this afraid of an Enforcer; in most cases Enforcers were there to protect them.

But Secant was used to the Enforcers having the silver-grey liquid-metal appearance of the past. This one took the physical form of one of the creatures that inhabited a record she was familiar with.

The creature was called a Tangler.

So instead of smooth silver and graceful lines, she was confronted with teeth that were covered in viscous slime and a foul stench. The slime would periodically congeal and drip from his large teeth. Secant followed its movement as it fell through the semi-tangible floor with faintly-audible splats.

Feeling frightened out of her wits, Secant snapped her senses back up into the Enforcer’s irritable gaze. Suppressing the urge to panic, she silently waited for her orders.

“There is an Amendment to make,” he finally stated, as if such momentous news was trivial.

“Now? There hasn’t been one since—”

A growl issued, low and menacing. His ensuing response was so clipped it might have cut the air between them. “Dare you interrupt me? Are you questioning orders?”

Secant felt herself leak out a little more. “N-No! Of course not.”

“Paragraph 7,219,403 of volume 8,204,512,214. Add this.” He passed her a fluttering square piece of paper that caught the light of the charged star and glowed.

Secant’s eyes widened. Superior paper. She’d never seen such high-quality paper. There were only few places where such paper could have come from.

Was it from the Department of Universal Affairs?

Or could it even be the Centre, or even… the Atrium?

The paper floated in the air like it was held by its corner by invisible hands. She groped at the paper with one of her extended appendages and held onto it tightly.

“Yes, sir, right away!” Secant mentally congratulating herself for not stuttering this time.

“Good.” Without so much as a farewell, the Enforcer disappeared as abruptly as he appeared.

Secant glanced around hesitantly for a few moments before heaving a sigh of relief. Working alone was what she was used to anyway. Sometimes these superior beings would often like to watch her make the Amendment. That would make her frightfully nervous. When she was nervous she would often make some mistakes. Mistakes made in a mortal record would be grounds for extinguishment.

Extinguishment was… Secant shuddered at the thought and tried to keep it in the back of her mind. It wouldn’t do to think about that thought. Orders were absolute and had to be carried out, no matter what.

Secant pushed through the traffic of other dwellers and moved towards the shelves she was responsible for. Some of the shelves to either side were growing disorderly and some of the worse off ones were gnarled with chaotic energy.

Without the careful maintenance of the shelves from beings like her, the built-up chaos would grow out of control. The shelves would break, throwing all those records into the surface of the charged star, instantly erasing all those mortal lives from existence, as if they had never been.

At the correct shelf, Secant struggled to pull out a hefty tome. The book was bound in something close to leather and a super-dense material that resembled rubber. The material didn’t matter of course. After all, it was the weight of the lives it carried that made it so heavy.

Secant dragged the volume along the floor, glad that the tome was held up by the semi-tangible flooring. She audibly thanked it and felt that it was pleased. The floor decided by itself what it would hold up and hold back. For now, it held back the charged energy of the star and held up the lives of the tome. Secant once saw a dweller accidentally drop a tome through a recalcitrant floor. The tome has plummeted all the way to the charged surface, instantly erasing the existence of countless mortals.

Sometimes, she still hears the screams.

From the dweller, that is. The Auditor eventually caught him.

Drifting to her usual spot to make amendments, Secant tapped on the inscriptive device upon the tabular surface of a raven. The raven squawked and shifted a little, but Secant didn’t complain, for ravens made the best writing desks.

Secant changed the Registry to the instructions written down with a decisive gesture, and then sat back, admiring her work. Despite the pressure, she was a professional and the change was perfect. If Secant had a mouth she would have smiled.

This, she thought, was my finest edit yet.

Deep ravines made of parchment and paper carpeted the floor in this otherwise quiet and stately hall.

Golden columns towered over heavy mahogany desks piled tall with apparatus intended for correction and editing. The hall was large. Infinitely so. But for some reason the desks were always cramped and tight. As if infinite space was somehow at a premium.

Faint whispers could be heard as one set of footsteps laboriously made its way past shelves and records of a differing sort to the Registry. Unlike the Registry of Mortals, this place recorded the lives of a different sort.

Lives like them.

The Auditor stood with tired eyes fixed blearily on a dial that moved as endlessly as this place had stood. It didn’t track time. No, it was something much more fundamental than that.

The Auditor, who was once one of many beings that stood in this place… was flustered.

She was flustered because there was no one to comfort her. No one to share her grief or even empathise with her grievances. There was not a soul interested in the inner workings of this once vast and powerful department.

An Auditor’s duty was to maintain order so that everything flowed smoothly.

Instead of screaming (or breaking down or destroying one of the infinite desks that would somehow still be replaced the next day not that she had tried really, no seriously, she hadn’t), she gripped her staff and muttered some choice words she had picked up from mortals a few thousand years back. It may have had something to do with genitalia and ancestry. Well, since there were none around to hear of it, her propriety wouldn’t be called into question. Her professional conduct even less so.

She had been good.

For too long.

And besides, who would question an Auditor?

The Auditor swept her gaze past the vast glowing structure seated in the centre of the room. From here, the Roots of All Causes tapped into the vast uncountable worlds were laid bare for her to see. The System, even more ancient than the department that sat around it, was still as steadfast and unyielding as the day it started.

A flash of red and a small ticket punched itself out of the pseudo-imaginary membrane to materialise in the pseudo-corporeal reality of the Centre for Reality Control. The Auditor reflexively reached out and grabbed the wayward paper and lazily scanned the contents and then crushed it in her grip.

What purpose did it serve for her to continue the work that was once given to the Uncountable beings within the Centre?

There was always the next job. It was always like this. The temptation was great to lay down her staff and to join her many, many colleagues in the extended ‘vacation’ the lot of them jointly decided. Of course they were diligent in the beginning. Of course they were. They all believed in the Author and believed in the Original Purpose.

But time dragged on.

And in the Root of All Causes where all Auditors gathered there was one thing that was even more powerful than the Author’s Words.

Boredom.

Yes, like any creature, over the millennia of existence, the Auditors… gave up. And she, like many of her colleagues, resisted until only she remained. Not without cause, mind you. She didn’t feel more than disdain for her fellow colleagues, because she understood. She completely understood. This job was boring and there were no rewards, no hint of reward, and no satisfaction. Only minor corrections here and there that a blind elephant could fix in their sleep.

From her sleeves she withdrew her Authority.

She fingered the little stone placard that licensed her to perform her duties.

Being an Auditor was supposed to be an important job.

She caught herself.

No, an Auditor is an important job.

But as she saw the next minor problem, a botched Amendment, the Auditor felt something visceral deep inside of her that she had never before.

Apathy.

Who cares?

The Auditor promptly gripped her staff and marched herself out of the office.

She’ll take a look at the damn mistake and take her sweet time doing it too. Maybe she’ll even talk to it. Maybe they could become friends?

It’ll be relaxing.

The Auditor suddenly smiled.

It’ll be a change of pace.

She should join her colleagues.

Yes, a vacation was in order.