The Archivist’s All-knowing Almanac

Once upon a time (though time, in this instance, is completely irrelevant), a great, great philosopher once wrote, “Space is big.”. That, in itself, is remarkably unhelpful in the grand scheme of Things, but it is relevant, which is more than we can say for time. Another, also great, great philosopher had this to say about space, too, “So much universe, and so little time.”. Which brings us back to the irrelevancy, or not, of time.

The big picture, the one we need to look at, is space, however. It really is beyond imagining for most of us just how big it really is.

Some say that space, the universe, is finite. In which case there are only a limited number of configurations available for any planet, or star system, or galaxy, and for any life that may, or may not, exist on those stellar bodies. This is a commonly agreed arrangement for the universe and is, no pun intended, almost universal in acceptance.

Others say that this universe is but one in a sprawling set of universes that, to even begin to imagine that for the mind of the common being, such as you or I, would boggle the mind, set us frowning and gaping, possibly raising a finger in the vain hope that we can ask a question that could begin to help us comprehend it all and then, probably, decide to have a cup of tea and a lie down. This is not as commonly accepted by serious cosmologists, but the wacky ones, the ones that write science fiction as a way to poke holes in their friends’ theories, absolutely love the idea. The serious cosmologists usually take this as a personal slight and do their very best to give terrible reviews of those science fiction stories at every opportunity.

Then there are those that believe that space, and the universe, are infinite. Try and wrap your head around that for a moment and, when you fail utterly to grasp it, realise that, in an infinite universe, it is distinctly possible that anything could happen. Almost literally anything. Can you imagine it? Try it. Imagine the strangest thing you can possibly think of and, in an infinite universe, it might possibly exist.

It’s not probable, but probability has a way of spoiling everybody’s fun.

Take, for example, this world. It’s not actually a world, but it actually is. It drifts through the infinite reaches of space, carrying a moon and it’s very own little star, that appear to chase each other around this planet that isn’t a planet and it all seems fun until one catches the other and then where would we be? Dawn approaches the top of this world, for it does have a top-side and a bottom-side because, in an infinite universe, these kind of impossible things happen with alarming regularity.

It, for want of a better word, is a man. Or, more accurately, a god, but actually more like a man. Albeit a man very roughly forty-five thousand miles in length and eleven thousand miles wide at the shoulders. He sleeps as he passes through the void, as he has done for uncounted millennia. In those intervening years between now and when he laid his head to rest, the universe has had its fair share of upheavals. Supernovae, galaxies crashing together (which is a bit of a misnomer as, when galaxies merge, its more of a smooshing together of diffuse objects. Space, you see, as we have already heard, is big, and planets and stars and such are so very, very small in comparison. Which is to say, crashing together sounds good, but if you want accuracy, think of two light snow showers merging. That’s not even close, either, but I bet it looks really pretty in your mind’s eye.), that sort of thing.

The man, or god, has spent a lot of time getting hit by debris. Debris that brought all the common elements, all the uncommon elements and some quite socially disruptive elements to rest upon his sleeping form. Over billions of years, the surface of the man became almost indistinguishable from that of a planet and so, therefore, it, he, might as well be described as one. And people evolved on this planet. Not so many, at first, and they were odd little things that struggled to survive, but survive they did. And evolved. And thrived.

And it is on this planet, this man, this god, where time reasserts itself into some workable fashion that we can try to get to grips with. For time has no beginning or end, unlike the planet/man/god who will, one day, wake up and wander off to the bathroom wiping sleep from their eyes. Not this day, however, for this day is the day the impossible happens.

This day, something so strange and improbable occurs that people will talk about it for countless generations, assuming anybody survives, and it will have ramifications for the entire universe, or universes, if you happen to be one of those smart-arse cosmologists who have too low a threshold for making humorous asides. Nobody likes them.

What happens this day cannot happen, it shouldn’t happen. It was, as previously stated, impossible and, as also previously stated, these kind of things happen too often to be coincidences.

And let’s not get started on those!

-+-

Atop Mount Pintel, home of the gods and other assorted immortals, above the Forest of Nethers that gathered around the base, where, on any given day, the top of the mountain could reach a good eight thousand feet in height and, on bad days, especially those cold ones that make you shiver rather than those that make you worry that your extremities are about to turn black and smelly and fall off, could only reach a paltry one-and-one-half thousand feet in height, the Fates gathered around their looms and were not happy.

It’s safe to say that the Fates were rarely happy. They did, after all, spend their entire lives tending to the looms of destiny, watching the lives of mortals pass by in seeming instants and never having the chance to experience life themselves. You know, go on a date, or to sit and watch the sunrise, or to have a really decent pizza while watching fountains spew sparkling water in sprays that catch the light just so, almost bringing the observer to tears at the sheer, impressive beauty of the world.

Oh, no. The Fates couldn’t do any that, because they had to tend to the destinies of every being on this world. They envied those Fates on other worlds, where the inhabitants had all-but forgotten the Fates existed. No job to do when no-one believed in all that. Here, though, people believed in fate and destiny. They really, really believed it.

Once, one of the Fates had tried to start a union, pausing her deliberations upon the weave of life and had, by pure accident, lost a mortal altogether, dropped from the tapestry of life, never noticed again. No-one knew how much damage that had done to the world, what empires had arisen because this mortal did not, technically, exist, or had fallen, or had simply carried on as though nothing had happened. It was all rather complicated and difficult to reconcile. Safe to say, there was no more union talk from anyone. Not for a while, at least.

“Oh! Oh, no! No, no, no!” One of the Fates peered at her weave and began to wave for the attention of her supervisor. “Code: Effluent! Code: Effluent! We have a ... I don’t know. Whatever it is, it’s impossible.”

The supervising Fate in charge of Mortal Affairs and Office Dress Code didn’t rush to reach the side of the Fate that had called. She was a known trouble-maker, flighty and with far too much interest in the lives of the mortals under her ministrations. Unlike the supervisor, who only had interests in efficiency, protocols and decent biscuits to go with the morning coffee. With a sigh, she reached the side of the Fate and pushed back her glasses in a way that screamed that this had better be for something important.

The supervisor looked at the point on the tapestry the Fate indicated. Then she had to look again, to make sure. The third look was to make absolutely certain that they were not both going mad, as Fates were wont to do every so often, and the fourth look came as the supervisor tried to decide whether she could blame the whole thing on the Fate that had spotted the anomaly in the first place. She narrowed her eyes, assessing the Fate’s chances of putting a spoke in that particular wheel of blame and whether she, or the Fate, would be the one hurled headlong into the gravel of disciplinary action.

“That’s impossible. We need to bring in Management.” In all her thousands of years, the supervisor had only called Management once, and only to inform them of the fire alarm test. They were not pleased. “You. Come with me. If I’m going down, I’m taking you with me.”

-+-

By some strange coincidence, ‘down’ was exactly the direction that Gammer Goodhiding had taken to reach the conclave of Beldame witches. They did so like their ‘conclaves’ and their ‘gatherings’ and their ‘moots’ and Gammer rarely attended. She preferred working the fields than to sit and listen to a bunch of old women, that took hairy moles as the epitome of fashionable accessories, cackle and witter on about things that, frankly, Gammer Goodhiding did not care for. The price of pointed hats going up and who they needed to curse for it. That kind of thing.

“Ladies! Ladies! And Bambold, of course.” Madame Parhaya gave a respectful nod toward Bambold of the Ancient Order of Warlocks. He snored, missing everything. “There’s no use arguing about it. This is a sign that the world is going to end and we need to prepare. We ...”

“Which end?” Mamma Flurving, one of the most curious and downright annoying witches broke in, pointing the stem of her long clay pipe Parhaya’s way. “Footward or Headward?”

Parhaya ignored that and Gammer Goodhiding scoffed internally. It was a good question. You can’t go talking about ends of the world without specifics. That’s how people got lost. Gammer Goodhiding never got lost, because she knew her ends from her means, and she could be very mean when she wanted to be.

“What, exactly, has happened, my lovely?” Gammer Goodhiding raised her finger, giving Parhaya her sweetest smile, causing all the colour in Parhaya’s face to leak to her boots. “I do so would love to hear that, instead of vague warnings of ends and things, don’t ye think? I’m sure ye do.”

“It’s best if we just show you, your most honourable grace, Gammer ...” Parhaya paused the formalities at a light cough from Gammer, visibly shaking. “This appeared an hour ago. Just appeared, out of nowhere. In its wake, an entire village killed each other. Since then, it’s disappeared again and we can’t find it.”

Gammer Goodhiding stared at the image conjured in the air at the centre of the circle of witches. In this place, a sub-under-side dimension meeting place, they could do such things openly, though Gammer didn’t like the ostentation of it all, using magic so frivolously. Still, the image served to make the point Parhaya needed it to make. Gammer watched the thing pop into existence and then the chaos began to spread at great speed.

“Oh, bugger.” It was, perhaps, one of the most dangerous things in existence. Especially in the wrong hands.

It was a book.

-+-

The Archivist’s All-knowing Almanac has this to say about the universe:

It is impossible to say, with any degree of accuracy, what the true nature of the universe may be. This has led to many debates among the many and varied peoples that occupy the universe and has, on occasion, caused the most bloody, civilisation-destroying wars that the universe has ever witnessed.

Not least between those that think the universe has a rational, quantifiable and testable origin, based upon mathematical principles and scientific practices, and those that believe that that is nothing but a bunch of heretical hogwash and that it was quite obvious that gods, of various kinds, created the universe and anyone that thinks otherwise deserve nothing but a painful death and, if the religion has such a thing, an afterlife filled with pain and suffering for the rest of eternity.

It is safe to say that both sides are quite certain of the veracity of their, particular, view of the universe.

Take, for instance, the Blevinet people of the world known as Rnhrre, who believe that the universe came into being when their god, Plakfark the Brutally Present, forgot to put his pants on one day and simply wandered off, never to wear them again. Those pants became the primordial universe from which all life came, which explained, to them, why they all smelled vaguely of some kind of cooked meat that someone had left under the bed for a week.

Or, the people of Qwuhurrr, who ...

The Archivist’s All-knowing Almanac goes on to detail the universe creation myths and stories of several billion cultures from around the universe that, in itself, is pretty impressive, but not quite as impressive as the fact that the Archivist’s All-knowing Almanac did not exist in this time prior to five o’clock that very morning. Time, as has already been established, puts a damper on a lot of interesting ideas.

This made a lot of people concerned. Scared, mostly, but certainly concerned, too.