Interlude: Chosen for the Grave, Part 21
"Services start in five minutes! Come one, come all! Services starting in five minutes! Beds and meals available afterwards! Come one, come all!"
Valerian smiled and crossed the street to be out of the way of the horde of people scrambling for the entrance of this particular Church of Youth. He had created the Church, in those long-ago days before Phil the shadow demon brought them here. He had created it as a lark, because it was funny. The idea that the arrogant, bombastic, aristocratic Hyūga Hiashi should have to burn his fortune funding something so boisterous and so thoroughly oriented at the lower classes. It had been hilarious at the time. Now, seeing the incredible poverty that the congregation of the Church lived in, Valerian was conflicted. On the one hand, he had done real, tangible good. He had created something that gave people warmth in the winter, food and drink all year round, and a sense of community and hope. Of the three of them, Val had probably done the most to actually uplift society before coming here.
Still. Everything in this world was their fault. Valerian's. Earl's. Oli's. Every death, every sorrow, every wound, every illness. They had created all of it for the sake of entertainment.
Heinlein had had a concept of 'fictons', the idea that every story was true somewhere, that every time a new story was written a new universe would spring into existence to embody it. If there really were ficton universes, if writing really could create them, then literacy should be abolished. It would save the lives of...more people than he could think of a number to describe. Of course, if literacy were to be banned then people would simply start creating and passing on the stories verbally. Stories had a life of their own, and they fought for survival just as much as any animal did. They burrowed into the minds of young children and ancient elders, reproducing every time they were told to a new ear. When chased in an attempt to stamp them out, they hid deep in the quiet whispers and the anonymous pamphlets.
Stories were powerful. Stories had changed the world. The story of Equality was one that had been told down through the ages and fully matured back in the twentieth century with the advent of radio and television. The story had spread across the land, gliding on the electromagnetic winds as it passed lightly through every ear and every eye. Even those who hated the story had sheltered it. They had passed on corrupted versions of it, adding hatred and poison to the amniotic fluid of the mind so that when the new generation of Equality was born it had been twisted into something antithetical to its parents. Those corrupted children still existed but the true story, the shining story that everyone knew was true regardless of how much they hated that fact, that story was slowly winning the long war against its tortured offspring.
There were other stories. The story of Religion had been around far longer than Equality and had touched more hearts. It had made more promises and been twisted to more ends. Its family tree was deeper and wider and held far more branches than its many-generations-younger cousin. Many of those branches shone purest gold...and many of them dripped poison.
The story of Chosen for the Grave was a tiny story, very young and very weak. It had been heard by a few handfuls of people. Yet still it existed and lived and breathed in their hearts, whispering its promises of adventure and excitement and relief from the boredom and stress of everyday life. It told of great heroes, mythic figures, fearsome monsters. It told of daring escapes, tragedies both quiet and loud, of the power for one person, or a few people, to change society through sheer force of will.
Chosen for the Grave lived and breathed in its own ficton, and so now did its creators. Its authors had become trapped in their own story, no longer above the fearful events and deadly dangers, no long safely sheltered behind the fourth wall. Valerian, Earl, and Oli had found a tentative welcome conditional on their continued usefulness. There was no shortage of ways to be useful, that was certain. Valerian had hundreds, perhaps thousands of jutsu that he could trade. He knew parts of the worldbuilding that the others didn't...Earl because his brain was cheese and he tended to forget things, Oli because there were things created before he joined the team and some of those things never happened to come up thereafter. Sometimes it was neither. There were notes that Valerian had kept stocked away for a rainy day, little doodles and scribbles that had never been run past the others yet had still made it into this world regardless. The painter who lived at 7 Senju Way, 3rd Floor and worked on the mural across the street on his lunch hour. The young couple who lived above the bakery just off Namikaze Park and revelled in the joy that was their new daughter, no matter how sickly she was. The telescope merchant, cursed to never speak with the one person most desperate to buy his wares. Valerian had used his jutsu, mostly the Telescope Technique, to check on these and a hundred other daydreams and half-baked ideas. Every single one of them was here. He was responsible for all of them.
He hadn't mentioned this to Earl or Oli. As far as he could tell, neither of the others had put it together that even the parts they hadn't agreed on were real, and they certainly hadn't spent much time thinking about the implications of creating a universe. Oli because he was too optimistic, too focused on helping the people in front of him. Earl because...well, because he was too wrapped up in his seal research and, honestly, a little oblivious. Valerian hoped that his friend clung tight to that lack of self-examination.
Here it was. The green door with the faded blue trim, the trim that had been put there years ago by a newly-married and apple-cheeked young woman with hope for the future.
He stared at the door for a moment, thinking about creation and destruction and the importance of authorial choices. And then he knocked.
There was a rustling from inside. A moment later, the door opened to reveal an older woman, her skin leathered by decades of working at the tannery. There were tear tracks on her face.
"Mrs Tanaka?" said Valerian, struggling to get the words out. "My name is Valerian. I'm very sorry for your loss. May I come in?"
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