“Well, this is just depressing,” The Great Erectus said as he, Faun, and a writhing ball of madness wandered through an abandoned, ruined city.

“What happened?” Faun asked as she looked around sadly. “Everything is...”

“Fucked,” The bathrobe clad ape-man said, finishing her sentence, “the appropriate scientific term is fucked.”

“Saaaad...” The ball of tentacles, eyes, and unconditional love sighed, “So much life just wasting away… um… you know...”

She looked over at The Great Erectus hopefully.

“Yeah, Cuddles,” The hominid grumbled as he picked through the remains of a looted shop. “You can have this one, too. This world is in full greenhouse gas runaway. It will take millions of years for everything to recover and it only has hundreds before it goes poof. Kinder to put what’s left out of its misery.”

“Yay!” the ball exclaimed happily… “Um… I mean...”

“You said what you meant, vulture,” the ape snorted.

“But, what happened?” Faun asked.

“Great Filter number one-hundred and twelve,” the ape replied, “Technology induced climate change. Just about every species will encounter this particular obstacle,” he said as he flipped through a decades old magazine. “It’s a nasty one too. Not many worlds do what is needed to prevent this or take action soon enough once it starts. The result isn’t always this bad though. This time it triggered a full-bore mass-extinction event.”

“Is there anything we can do?” Faun asked.

“Yeah,” the hominid replied, casting the magazine aside, “let Cuddles eat it.”

“I mean, can’t we fix it somehow?” Faun asked. “I mean we have both Cuddles and me here, I’m sure we-”

“Can stabilize an entire planet and craft a completely new ecosystem?” the hominid snorted, “Sure, we could and then we would still have to search the cosmos to find it a new home and move it. How long would that take? We are kind of on a schedule here. Even with Cuddles sticking around to help, completely out of the goodness of her heart or whatever the fuck she has in there, we still have a LOT to do and not enough to time to do it. We have to exercise some divine judgment or at least divine time management. This one is a loss.”

“But don’t you have all the ‘time’ you want?” Faun asked looking down at a bug crawling across the wall.

“Yes, I can stop ‘time’… locally...” the ape man replied, “But the whole universe is still ticking right along and relative motion is a bitch. I would have to pretty much freeze the entire fucking solar system to guarantee no problems and that’s not easy. Even if I do it, that just takes care of this particular set of ‘clocks’. Everything else will still be screaming along at the speed of causality and our little bouncing baby universe will still be growing at the speed of light towards systems that we could save. I know hundreds, thousands, millions, or even billions of years sounds like a lot of time but it really isn’t. This is a disaster of cosmic proportions and if we don’t move with a purpose for a very long time there is a lot at stake here. We spend months or years for each dying world and we potentially lose many more thriving ones. Sorry, Faun. This is part of what it means to be one of us, well… one of us who actually, despite appearances, gives a shit.”

“No...” Faun moaned quietly.

The hominid sighed as he turned to Cuddles, The One who Loves All.

“We’re moving on to the next one,” he said. “Do your thing.”

“Will do!” Cuddles said happily. “I’ll see you guys later!”

The bathrobe clad ape man laid his hand on Faun’s shoulder and disappeared as Cuddles floated into the air expanding in size.

“Oh you poor dears,” Cuddles said as her writhing form blocked out the sun and all hope.

Rejoice! Your suffering is at an END.

***

“Ok, let’s see,” The ape man said as he and Faun floated in a vast ocean of stars, “Where next?”

He looked over at Faun.

“You ok?”

“Yeah,” Faun said sadly, “I’m ok.”

The hominid scrunched his lips thoughtfully.

“Let’s head over to a world that the locals call Nolta,” he said smiling, “You need a break and that place is always a good time.”

“But we have no time for breaks,” Faun replied glumly.

“We have no time to waste,” the hominid replied, “Breaks are important, especially for you. Fatigue is a thing, even for us. We don’t take care of ourselves and we will get sloppy and make mistakes that can doom entire systems… or worse.”

“Worse?”

“We can get burned out, exhausted, irritable, and lose empathy. You don’t want a couple of flakes deciding the fate of entire worlds.”

He put his arm around her, causing her to smile shyly.

“I could use a break,” he smiled, “and you need one. You are still new to this. Nolta will be fun. I love those guys and they are a lock for relocation. We could really use a win after the last couple.”

“We could,” Faun sighed, “… Thanks...”

“So off to Nolta we go!” the ape man exclaimed, “We’ll assume mortal form, hit some restaurants, catch some shows, maybe cruise a beach or two… I tell you these guys have it going on. It’s the sort of place that reminds an entity why they bother… And you will LOVE what they have done with their environment!”

“It sounds really nice,” Faun smiled wearily.

“Yeah, we will go there, take a few days off, recharge, and then get back to the grind,” the ape man smiled as he extended his hand.

Faun blushed a little as she took it.

***

The stars suddenly shifted in position around the pair and they were floating above a beautiful green and blue planet.

“And this is Nolta!” the hominid exclaimed spreading his arms wide.

“It’s beautiful!” Faun enthused as she reached out with her senses. “So much life!”

“Definitely time for a break!” The bathrobe clad entity laughed, “You are starting to sound like Cuddles!”

He squinted his eyes as he looked upon Nolta.

“Let’s find us a couple of ‘volunteers’,” he grinned wickedly.

***

“I demand to speak to your supervisor at once!” Faleena shouted angrily, “I clearly said I wanted this tea to be slightly sweet and this is clearly semi-sweet! When say slightly sweet I mean slightly—“

Faleena blinked and shuddered slightly.

The cafe manager reluctantly entered the room.

“I understand that there is a problem?” he asked as he ran a slightly webbed hand through the closely cropped fine silver-green fur on the top of his head.

“The problem,” Faleena said with a weird smile, “Is that I am a miserable cunt who, despite having advantages and privileges that most will never have, am still incapable of anything close to the happiness I thought I would have when I decided to exchange my youth and beauty for the comforts of marrying someone that I was neither in love with nor remotely attracted to. This has made me angry at everything except myself because if I ever actually accept how responsible I am for my unhappiness, there is a very good chance I would jump off of a fucking bridge.”

You could hear a pin drop.

“The other problem is that this poor guy, who has been nothing but nice and professional was being mistreated by a complete and total bitch and you knew it. You just sat there and let this guy who just wants to make people happy by making a truly excellent cup of tea get trampled by a megakaren.”

“A megakaren?” the manager asked in complete confusion.

“Sorry,” Faleena said, “It means someone exactly like myself. Do your fucking job, dude.”

Faleena turned to the barista and smiled.

“This is a very good cup,” she said as she gave him an insane tip. “Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.”

She waved to the stunned people in the cafe.

“If anything I said hit close to home,” she grinned, “Think about it. Peace!”

Faleena then strode from the cafe, cup in hand.

***

Faleena plopped down on a park bench nearby, carefully set down her tea, and shivered once more.

She looked down at herself.

“Comfy?” a disembodied voice chuckled.

“I thought that all the humans were killed?” Faleena/Faun asked.

“Oh, these aren’t humans,” the voice replied. “Humans don’t have webbed fingers and toes, don’t come in blue, have eyes remotely similar to what you are looking through, and a host of other differences. It just turns out that for worlds of this type, bilateral symmetry, and the development of a biped with two arms with this general layout is a very successful design. It’s called parallel evolution and is why you will see lots of these fuckers as we wander about. You will also see loads of crabs and beetles for exactly the same reason. However, these guys are NOT just blue humans. There was only ONE human race, may the stars carry the name of those glorious assholes to the end of time and beyond.”

“Crabs?”

“Oh yeah, you made everything from scratch like a total noob,” the voice snickered, “You didn’t think of crabs. I’ll show you one. This place has some really cool examples. Just sit here and enjoy that tea. It’s excellent. Imma go get another asshole. Just wait here a few minutes… Oh! There he is!”

A few minutes later someone walked up.

“How’s the tea?” the man asked.

“Delicious!” Faun replied. “So, what do first?”

Her companion winced.

“Well, the first thing we are going to do is look around and find out what’s wrong and how bad it is,” he replied.

“Is something the matter?” Faun asked, “Everything seems fine to me.”

“Yeah, for most places,” her friend replied, “But I didn’t go halfway across the fucking galaxy for ‘fine’. This park should be filled musicians and artists. The sidewalks should be covered in chalk drawings. And just where the hell is everybody? This is urban green space. There should be people here. And look at that!”

He pointed at a neatly tended flower bed.

“Flowers?” Faun asked.

“That should be a community garden!” her friend exclaimed. “All of those stone lined ‘flower beds’ are supposed to be filled with hundreds of different fruits and vegetables!”

He looked around.

“Something is weird and not in a good way,” he said as he got up. “Let’s go and see what’s what and who needs an encounter with the universal motivator.”

***

As they walked the sparsely populated streets The Great Erectus became more and more annoyed.

“Bullshit… This is bullshit,” he grumbled as they paused in front of a tidy, but completely abandoned building.

Faun looked at her friend with concern. All of the strange and terrible things they had witnessed in their short time together never seemed to bother the being that Cuddles simply called “Big Guy”. This time, however, it was really bothering him.

“Do you know what this is, or was?” he demanded looking at the structure. “This was a local public library and not just any public library. You could spend days in one of these places… I could spend days in one of these places!”

He walked up to the door and examined a small metal plaque.

“What the fuck?” he asked in annoyance, “Everything’s ‘online’?”

“Online?”

“Something we haven’t covered yet,” he replied. “It has to do with ‘computers’, ‘networks’, and ‘internets’, several other things that ‘parallel evolution’ pretty much guarantee. It would take awhile to explain from scratch and I have a very bad feeling that you are about to learn all about them.”

Faun just sighed. Any hope of a break would have to wait just a little longer. She extended her senses to see if she could perhaps assist.

Her mentor was right. Some was “wrong”. Everything was tidy, healthy, and clean. All of the living beings were not under any environmental stress or suffering in any other way. If anything the environment was thriving.

At the same time, there was a subtle deep melancholy seeping through everything…

Including some of the animals that she initially considered healthy.

She focused on one of them, a small quadruped, lounging with several others of its kind, sunning themselves and waiting for food that they were confident would arrive as it did every day.

It was content enough, but quietly sad.

It was missing someone. She delved deeper. It had memories of living with one of the people she was inhabiting, happy ones.

It was still hoping they would come back… but knew they probably wouldn’t…

The further she looked the worse it got, such quiet sad loneliness.

Choking back tears she pulled her senses in tight against her, one of the few things she had mastered. However, as she did so, she sensed happiness.

There was a place nearby that seemed as happy and lively as her mentor expected this place to be.

It wasn’t far.

“I think...” Faun said quietly, “I think I found something.”

***

“What in the cinnamon toast fuck is this?!?” The “Big Guy” exclaimed as they walked into a huge, bright, and cheerful structure the size of a small mall.

It huge multi-storied open area, filled with cafes, restaurants, and clubs, dominated by a beautiful hologram decorated structure in the middle.

People were smiling, musicians were playing, artists were sitting around painting or crafting their wares, others were dancing in large open areas along with holographic figures beside screens filled with other merry-makers.

Faun smiled. It was nice to feel such happiness again after so long.

Her companion, however, was not smiling.

“Let’s grab a seat so I can hop out of this asshole and try to find out what the fuck is what.”

“You can’t do that in mortal form?” Faun asked.

“Wha?” her companion replied, “Uh… Of course I can!” he exclaimed defensively, “It’s just a pain in the ass.”

The pair made their way through the happy scene and got a table at a nice little cafe where people were sitting, happily chatting with holographic “friends” or looking at scenes on huge screens attached to their tables.

A hologram appeared as soon as they sat.

“Welcome to Upload!” the being said cheerfully, “Is today your rez day?”

“Nah,” the ape in local form replied, “Just hanging out. Give us a plate of gren poppers and a pitcher of horp.”

“Coming right up!” the figure beamed (literally) and disappeared.

“Oh I can’t wait for you to rez!” a hologram said to their real world companions at a nearby table. “You will love the Malrus server! I already have a nice plot reserved for you guys!”

“We can’t wait!” a woman smiled, “Of all the servers, we liked Malrus the best! Thank you again for getting us space there!”

“What are friends for!” the hologram smiled. “Thanks for looking after Hoppy for me. Oh I can’t wait until they figure out how to upload our pets!”

The Great Erectus groaned as if stabbed in the gut.

“Oh for fuck’s sake!” he exclaimed as he facepalmed. “Let’s go.”

“What?” Faun asked.

“They’re fucked. Let’s go,” he replied with a sigh. “Nolta belongs to Cuddles now.”

“Why?!?”

“Filter number two hundred and three,” The Great Erectus said quietly, “The Upload. God fucking dammit…”

“What’s ‘The Upload’?”

“Every now and then a society gets the bright idea to ‘upload’ their consciousnesses into their computer network,” he replied, “you don’t want to know what happens next. This is a bit dark for you right now. We will cover this one when you are a little older.”

“What’s going to happen to these people?” Faun asked urgently, “They seem really nice! Can’t they be saved?”

“I’m telling you, Faun,” he said sadly. “Let it go. C’mon,” he added as he reached for her.

“No!” Faun exclaimed as she pulled away. “You abandon world after world after world, giving them to Cuddles. I’ve understood every single time except this one! Why are we abandoning Nolta?”

“Ok,” he replied, “but remember, I told you that you didn’t want to know.”

He pointed at all the holograms.

“See the holograms, the glowing people?” The Great Erectus asked, “They are the people that have already been uploaded. The problem is that ‘uploading’ a consciousness isn’t as easy as everyone thinks it is.”

“Now rezzing Barri Kapusit,”

The building broke out in cheers at the announcement. A person jumped up and trotted over to the central structure where the doors opened and closed after him.

“And there goes another one,” the local controlled by the hominid sighed, “He isn’t going to be ‘uploaded’, he is going to be copied and at this planet’s level of technology it’s probably not even a full copy. Ol’ Barri there is going to have his neural patterns copied and uploaded to an artificial world and the real Barri… well… He’s going to get killed. It isn’t uploading, it’s genocide. This entire species is killing itself off. My Noltans are going extinct. Happy now?”

“And you are going to just let it happen?!?”

“What would you do?” he replied, “Tell them, ‘Hey, you know all of those people you guys have uploaded? They’re all dead. All of them. Your mom and your sister and your kid? Dead. You are hanging out with pretty zombies, not the people that you loved.'?”

“Yes!” Faun exclaimed, “We have to warn them!”

“Faun,” he sighed, “if you could get them to believe you which they won’t what would happen next?”

“They would stop doing this!”

“And then what would happen?” The ape-noltan asked, “What would happen as it sank in that all of those people were actually murdered? I’ll tell you what would happen. Chaos. It would kill them both individually and as a society. Imagine how you would feel if you realized that every one of your children were killed by your hand the second you whisked them into your cloak.”

“Oh… oh no!...”

“Yep,” the hominid replied. “And you didn’t, by the way. Your kids are fine,” he said answering the question she didn’t want to ask. ”We can do that sort of thing but these guys can’t. They have just somehow convinced themselves that they could.”

Upload complete!

A gigantic hologram of Barri appeared above the structure waving happily to the cheering crowd.

Now rezzing Karruia Jobbo

And excited squeal of delight came from a nearby table as a Noltan woman jumped up and down and trotted towards the exit.

“No!” Faun shouted as she lunged towards her. “You are making a terrible mistake! No! Don’t do it! You’ll die!”

The Great Erectus just sighed and canceled their order. He really wanted those poppers too, especially since this was likely the last time he was going to be able to enjoy them.

“Let go of me!” Karruia shouted as Faun tackled her. “I’ll miss my slot!”

“It’s a lie!” Faun shouted desperately as she shook her.

Faun was pulled off of Karruia by several Noltans, cafe staff and patrons alike.

“Oh Gawd, it’s one of them,” someone said. “Goddamn anti-rezzers!”

“Science denying idiot!” someone else shouted.

“Go back to destroying the woods, digidiot!”

“Loser!”

“Moron!”

Faun suddenly found herself surrounded by an angry mob, shouting and cursing at her.

“Put her on the list!” someone else shouted.

“No, it’s ok,” Karruia said as she dusted herself off, “I don’t want to press any charges. It’s my rez day! Just… just let her go.”

Faun was released and rushed towards Karruia again only to be intercepted by The Great Erectus.

“Told ya,” he said as he firmly dragged her out of the cafe as Karruia happily sprinted towards her doom.

***

“Why didn’t you stop her?” Faun asked with tears in her eyes.

“I could have,” her mentor replied, “but I might as well try to stop the tide from coming in, which is a lot of hassle. Right now there are thousands of Karruias hopping into the download booths and in a few minutes, thousands more will do the same. A few minutes later… you get the idea.”

“This is horrible!”

“Yup,” The Great Erectus replied, “Turn your back for one decade… Oh well. Let’s head over to Gravluxon. Odds are that’s still a cool place for a well deserved weekend.”

“No!” Faun exclaimed. “We have to stop this!”

“And how, exactly, do you propose we do that?”

“We… We make them believe!” Faun said forcefully, “We’re god… we’re entities! We can do things!”

“Like appearing as hundred foot tall beings and shouting the truth?”

“Yes!”

“And the news will say that we were holograms put there by anti-rezzers,” the Noltan-Erectus replied, “Or that we were some other sort of hoax. People believe what they want to believe. I can do many things but some things are beyond even me. Creating a universe from scratch is way easier than changing the minds of an entire people when they have decided to believe something, trust me. Nope. This is what they are gonna do and the longer we stay here the more depressed we are going to get. Let’s go, Faun.”

“No!” she shouted. “You go! I’m going to help these people! They need me!”

The Great Erectus just sighed.

“There are some lessons I had wanted to keep for later,” he said gently, “This is one of them. I’m telling you. The more you try to fix this, the worse you are going to make it for everyone involved, including yourself. They will soon be dead and gone but you will be around for a long time and what will happen if you try to mess with this will haunt you for aeons. You literally cannot comprehend exactly long that is yet but it’s a very long time.”

“I still have to try!” Faun shouted. “You might not care but I do!”

“I’ll let that slide because you are a rookie!” The Great Erectus exclaimed, “But never say I don’t care! It is because I do care that I let things like this happen. Torturing these poor little idiots to make yourself feel better is not caring!”

Now rezzing Cercli Mommludd

“Hello?” someone called out. “I think something went wrong. Hello? Can anyone hear me? Hello?”

The Great Erectus sighed. He knew what that was.

Looking over, he saw a nebulous form was drifting from group to group.

”Hello?!?” it cried, becoming increasingly distressed. ”Can anyone hear me?!?” it screamed in terror.

“Over here!” The Great Erectus shouted. “We can hear you.”

The glowing woman drifted their way.

“Oh thank Gawd!” she exclaimed as she approached, “Are you a developer or a mod? I don’t seem to be in sync.”

“Oh sweetie,” The Great Erectus said sympathetically, “I have some rather bad news for you...”

***

“...You mean that I’m DEAD?!?”

“Afraid so,” The Great Erectus replied, “and then became a disembodied spirit. Sorry.”

“And everyone else who uploaded is dead too?!?”

“Yep.”

“That’s billions of people!!!”

“Based on the population density of this city,” The Great Erectus replied, “that’s about what I figured.”

“But they said that it works!”

“Yeeeah...” he replied, “They often do. If it makes you feel any better you’re not the first species to make this mistake.”

The ghost just flopped down on a nearby bench, and promptly fell right through it into the floor.

The Great Erectus reached out and grabbed them, placing them gently on the bench.

“Try not to move until you get a feel for it,” he said gently.

The spirit held her head in her hands, her hands passing through her head and out the back.

She burst into tears.

The Great Erectus groaned and looked skyward.

Faun’s eyes lit up.

“I have a little experience with spirits,” she said trying to keep her voice even. “I know it might be tempting but you should try to avoid family. It will only make things worse.”

“Oh oh Gawd!” the ghost exclaimed, “My sister! She’s going to upload soon! We have to stop her!”

“Oh we can’t,” Faun said trying to not look at the hominid. “I’m afraid there’s nothing we can do.”

“There has to be!” the ghost cried, “She’s only twelve! Please! You have to help me save my baby sister!”

“It’s too much trouble,” Faun said, trying not to smirk, “We have far more important things to do than save your innocent baby sister who has done nothing wrong even if we do have the ability to do so!’

“You do?!?” the ghost exclaimed

“Yes we do,” Faun replied, “But we are far too busy and it would just make an inconvenient mess so we are going to leave your planet to be devoured by a friend of ours and move on to the next nice world. We are on our break after all!”

“GODDAMMIT!!!” The Great Erectus shouted. “JESUS FUCKING CHRIST!!!”

He turned to the pair and grinned malevolently.

“So...” he said as he separated from the Noltan, grinning ear to ear, “I understand that you two are maintaining that if someone had the power to stop something like this that they should?”

“Yes!” the ghost shouted.

Faun fell silent as her eyes widened. She knew that smile.

“In fact, if someone did have the ability to stop this and didn’t, no matter how much work it would be, they would be quite the asshole for not doing it?”

“Yes!” the ghost yelled. “They would have to!”

“Um… maybe we should just all calm down?” Faun said as she separated from her Noltan and started backing away.

They were suddenly floating in space above Nolta.

“Oh no you don’t, miss manipulation!” The Great Erectus grinned. “You are in this too, now! Time for your next lesson on why we don’t play God!”

His arm shot out, flicking the ghost on the forehead, just between and above her eyes, causing a new one to appear.

The ghost screamed in agony as she started to shine brighter and brighter, wings growing from her back and a glowing pure white bathrobe appearing around her luminous body.

“AAAaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAaaaaaaaaa…..” she screamed in agony. “Aaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh!” she proclaimed in a beautiful angelic voice.

“Behold!” The now bathrobe clad and highly annoyed ape man shouted, “the archangel Paininmyassael!”

“WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO ME?!?” Paininmyassael shouted with a voice of thunder as divine horns blared, all three of her eyes glowing brightly.

“Nothing much,” the ape man grinned, “just gave you the power to save your people… something that you said someone who had the power should do… You do want to save your people, right?”

“...YES...”

“Well, get to it.” The ape man grinned, unholy light shining in his eyes. “Chop chop.”

“...HOW?”

“I’m glad you asked.” the very pissed off hominid replied, “I shall bestow upon you artifacts of divine power.”

A baseball bat appeared in his hand.

“This, is the wand of blessings,” he smiled. “You shall travel the world seeking all of the lost souls wandering the land and then appear before them where you will then bless them upside the head. This will grant them peaceful slumber. Then you will pick up the in peacefully slumbering soul and you will carry each and every single fucking one of them to a single place and lie them down in rows about two meters apart.”

“...METERS?...”

“Sorry,” the ape man snickered, “Three dats. Place the sleeping lost children of Paininmyassael three dats apart making very sure they don’t touch because that gets weird and you will be the one who has to get them apart again.”

A small hand vacuum then appeared before Assael.

“This is the Dustbuster of Destiny,” The hominid grinned, “With this you shall collect the fragments of souls that have dissolved and with these...”

A magnifying glass and a pair of tweezers appeared.

“With the Lens of the Heavens and the Tweezers of Divine Judgment you will pick out the individual bits of soul for each and every one of these billions of people and put them back together again, laying them with the others three dats apart.”

The archangel Paininmyassael looked upon The Great Erectus at a loss.

“Oh but Paininmyassael,” the Great Erectus grinned answering the question he knew they had, “You are now a being of pure spirit and energy. Those are comprised of massless particles and therefore do not experience time. You can take as long as it takes.”

“BUT...”

“Yeah,” the Great Erectus sneered, “There is a little difference between praying for some all mighty 'god' to magically fix things and having to do it yourself, huh? You want to save your precious baby sister?”

“...YES...”

“Then this is the only way to do it,” the hominid grinned evilly. “Don’t worry, Faun is going to help, too. Aren’t you, Faun?”

“I...”

“Of course you are!” the hominid smiled, “unless you aren’t as kind and caring as you like to think you are. Paininmyassael over here can’t do it by herself. She needs someone with your particular skillset as well… Unless you want me to make Paininmyassael here disappear and we can ‘clock out’ and start our weekend...”

Faun made an uncomfortable squeak.

“That’s my girl!” the hominid grinned, “Your first job is going to be to get us some technical support.”

“Technical… support?...”

“Yeah, this whole computer upload nonsense is not in my wheelhouse,” the hominid smiled, “Time for you to meet the neighbors! Go talk to I/O and get them to help.”

“Io?”

“Not ‘Io’. It’s pronounced ‘I/O’,” the ape man snickered, “They are a bit touchy on that subject. They are also rather annoyed with me at the aeon so it’s best if you talk to them. Get them to help.”

“But...” Faun stammered, “I don’t know...”

“Figure it out!” The Great Erectus grinned as he grabbed her with a giant hand, rared back, and threw her.

“EEEEeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee...” Faun screamed as she shot across the universe and beyond.

“Hope you have some warm clothes!” he shouted after her as she streaked through reality itself.

“As for me...” The Great Erectus sighed…

Suddenly the entire solar system froze in place, every frame of reference for over a light year freezing between ticks of their own relative clocks.

“Oof,” he muttered rubbing his temples. “That’s gonna ache in the morning.”

He glared at the Archangel Paininmyassael.

“What are you still doing here!” he shouted. “I’m not going to hold this solar system still forever, you know. Get moving!”

“BUT HOW DO I FIND THEM?”

“Fucking noobs...” the hominid grumbled. “Okay, hold still.”

A halo appeared in his hands which he promptly shoved onto Paininmyassael’s head.

“There! Now you have the Google of the Gods equipped with the Celestial GPS of Garmin!” the bathrobe clad ape man smiled, “The souls should glow now (not that they weren’t before) and you can Google any angel related question you want! If you are still stumped you can find me with it… Happy now?”

“UM...”

“Go save your baby sister, Archangel!” the hominid laughed as he gave them a little shove, causing them to plummet to Nolta.

***

An undefined amount of time later (by definition), Cuddles appeared beside the ape-man.

“???” Cuddles said after breaking herself free.

“Hey,” the ape man said as he lounged in his cheap folding chair.

“Why did you lock down the solar system?” Cuddles asked as another chair appeared next to her.

“Check it out,” The Great Erectus said as he gestured to Nolta.

“Oof!” Cuddles exclaimed, her eyes glowing with sympathy. “The ol’ two-oh-three… No fixing that one.”

”Technically...” the ape-man grinned, “there is but, oh man is this going to suck… for them.”

“Them?” Cuddles asked as she flopped her ever changing form into the chair and accepted a bucket of popcorn.

“Faun and a new rookie,” The ape replied as he made a cooler full of beer appear between them. “They insisted so it’s time for another of Faun’s god lessons...”

“But the only way to fix a two-oh-three is to involve...”

Cuddles looked over at The Great Erectus with wide eyes.

“Oh, Big Guy...” She gasped as he started giggling, “You didn’t...”

The hominid started laughing and nodded, unable to speak.

“Oh that’s just wrong!” Cuddles laughed as she scooped up a tendril of popcorn, each fluffy kernel growing eyes and cheering happily as they jumped towards her many gaping mouths.