Rinse, reset, repeat

I looked towards the darkening sky, the wolf-grey clouds heavy with rain. Their dimensions shifted with every billow and gust, faces and shapes formed and undone within a breath. The vapours grew thick and impatient in mother nature’s grasp, and my stomach turned in warning.

“She’s preparing herself,” I murmured.

“Who is?”

Switching my gaze from the weighted skyline, I looked into my daughter’s face. Her cheeks ruddy and pupils wide with awe, she waited for my response.

“No one,” I said, taking the spatula from her clammy grasp and putting it back in the gelatinous cake batter. “Pass me that mould.”

Eager to please, she slid the container towards me and watched as I fed the batter into the silicone, smoothed it flat, and then sacrificed it to the oven to begin its transformation.

“Will they still come?”

Wiping my hands on my apron, I pulled my mouth into a smile and nodded. “It’s your tenth birthday, Cassie, of course they’ll come.” I looked towards the heavens again, the same unease clawing at my skin. “A little rain won’t stop them.”

This seemed to satisfy her, the remaining batter on the spatula devoured as she licked it clean before tossing it into the sink – her skip as she left the kitchen a display of forced nonchalance to spite her nervousness.

“Don’t dawdle!” I called after her. “Your friends will be here soon!”

There was no response – not that I was expecting one.

Alone in the broken-plan space, the white granite worktops glistening and the beat of rain a poor orchestra, I wondered why the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. My breath quickened as blood pulsed in my ears, and despite the desire to move my feet, they seemed pinned to the floor.

My eyes retained their autonomy, and flicking them to the glass wall meant to showcase the adjoining apple orchard, where perfect crimson fruit hung on unadulterated trees, I watched the wind part their branches and shake their leaves in interrogation.

She wants the truth…

A knock at the door – three slow, sure thuds – shattered my malaise. Adrenaline spiked through my veins as I clutched my hands to my throat, reminding myself to breathe.

“Mum!” Cassie yelled from her bedroom. “Can you get that?”

I knew how to walk. Even so, I had to count my steps as I placed one foot in front of the other, the flagstone tiles of the kitchen soon replaced by the warm threads of our mottled hallway carpet. I fixed my focus on the bronze handle of the front door, my face recomposing itself as I tried to shake off my mounting terror. The absence of a person-shaped shadow filling the sidelights or centre glazing only dawned on me when I stopped short of the welcome mat.

If it wasn’t for Cassie’s request, confirming she’d heard the knock too, I wouldn’t have turned the handle and welcomed the gravel-lined path of our front garden.

There wasn’t anyone there. However, without looking, I knew there was something waiting for me: the departing whirr of a drone was all the confirmation I needed.

Collapsing onto my knees, the stone steps greeting them cold and damp, I tried to stem my rising nausea. “Please…” I sobbed. “Not today…”

The package was unremarkable, like always. Made of silky vanta – a dense black alloy – and perfectly cubed, it was wrapped in cardboard and tied with twine to keep it inconspicuous. Even so, I knew the edges of its form like my tongue knew the ridges of my teeth.

“Mum?”

Cassie’s voice swept through the house and prompted me to wipe my face. Already on my feet by the time she joined me on the porch steps, I picked up the package and hugged it to my stomach.

“Is that for me?” she asked.

“No,” I replied quickly. “Not this one.”

Cassie’s face darkened, both in demeanour and actuality. A shadow brushed past us, unsubtly ominous, and I felt the first touch of change – a shift in the fabric that stitched world together. A second later, mother nature’s grasp weakened and the rain poured through her fingers like sand through lace.

I hurried Cassie back inside and made to close the door – until another knock on its wood stopped me mid-shove. Two welcome silhouettes appeared in the centre glazing, leading Cassie to dive under my arm and fling the door wide open again. She greeted our visitors with a squeal and threw her arms around her waiting friend.

The friend’s mother shot me a weary glance – one suggesting the rain was as welcome as the noises emitting from our children.

“Come in,” I said. “You’re the first ones here.”

The mother – Suzanne if I wasn’t mistaken – took off her cagoule and passed it to me, my hand ready to receive the bright cobalt design, fringed with pink and tipped with white around the hood, but my fingers passed through the fragmenting fabric and refamiliarized themselves with my palm. Suzanne blinked as her cagoule ceased to exist, leaving me to drop my hand back to my side.

A small silence passed before she said, “Is that a Victoria sponge I smell?”

“Y-yes,” I managed to choke out. “I’m a little behind schedule.” I tried not to taste the irony as I formed the words.

With Cassie and her friend already in the designated party space, I followed the sound of laughter and returned to the spacious kitchen with the glass wall overlooking the orchard. There were no apples on the trees now and their betrayal stung like a slap to the face.

“Shall I take that for you?” asked Suzanne.

Blinking back tears, I shook my head and put the package down on the counter. “I’d love your help with the cake, actually.”

Suzanne tilted her head. “What cake?”

I glanced at the oven. Its light was still on and the fan was circulating heat, but there was no Victoria sponge rising in the empty cake mould.

Sustenance was always the first to go.

“Silly me…” I muttered.

“Will the others be joining us soon?” Suzanne asked.

Walking over to the sink, I tested the taps and almost cried with relief when silky water poured from the burnished faucets. Desperate to taste the life-prolonging liquid, I filled a tumbler and consumed the contents in three gulps, committing the sensation to memory.

“No,” I said, placing the glass back in the sink. “The rain has washed them away.”

Suzanne didn’t immediately respond, my stomach turning in anticipation until her distinctive laugh – a staccato of hiccups and snorts – banished the silence.

“Well, let’s not disappoint Cassie,” she said eventually. “We can’t control the weather but we can control the fun.”

I stood back and watched Suzanne entertain our daughters for quite some time, her spirited nature a dance of blissful ignorance. She didn’t notice the barren apple trees fragment and splinter into nothingness, the orchard a wasteland beyond the window wall. She didn’t see the bricks from my neighbours' homes shatter and crumble into nonexistence, their absence a threat of further consequences. She wasn’t aware as I mourned my desperate losses and silently screamed at what they cost.

And when it was time for Suzanne and her daughter to leave, all that was left was the bones of my house – the foundations I’d built the world upon.

“Bye!” Cassie yelled to her departing guests, unaware they were breaking apart beneath the rain, even as they walked along a path that wasn’t there and opened a gate that didn’t exist. Where the droplets touched, the world lost form.

I peered down at the package in my hands and pulled on the twine so it fell away like silk draped across a sharpened sword. The cardboard was next, leaving only my skin and the vanta standing between the contents of the cube.

“What now, Mum?” Cassie asked.

I sat crossed-legged in the door’s arch and placed the vanta box in front of me. “Come,” I said, beckoning for her to cuddle in and keep me warm.

She immediately nestled under my arm and looked up at the sky. With a ripple and a wave, the ashen pall cleared to blinding white, the torrent merely pixels of coded atoms wiping away the world.

“It starts and ends with the rain,” I said. “It sustains and obliterates depending on mother nature’s will.”

Cassie didn’t say anything; she only hugged me tighter.

“She can’t touch us here,” I explained. “But we can’t stay for long.”

“Mmff?”

I barely heard her question, muffled as it was under my arm, but I knew she was asking why.

Using my free hand to reach towards the cube, I ran my thumb over the lid. “She doesn’t like being defied,” I replied with a sigh.

Cassie pulled away from me and raked her gaze across my face. Surrounding the inner void of her eyes was a ring of blue flecked with moss green and hazelnut. They reminded me of home, which was half the reason I’d defied mother nature in the first place.

“Who’s that?” Cassie murmured, pointing away from me.

I clutched her to my side, the vanta box and the shell of our home the only structures left in the world. Everything else was sheer nothingness – no shapes or matter, just an abyss of formless nothing. But within that nothing, a figure made of dust and stars paced a semi-circle outside our home.

“A Creator,” I guessed. “Or maybe an Enumerator this time.”

“Neither,” said the figure.

“Ah,” I said.

“Ah indeed.”

“Who is it, Mum?”

I made sure Cassie was secure before I replied, “Mother nature.”

“She makes the rain?”

I nodded.

“Open the cube,” mother nature demanded, “and return to the vacuum.”

“I can’t do that,” I said. “You’ve wasted a trip.”

The stars and dust making up mother nature collided, creating violent bands of nebula clouds that parried and fought for dominance.

I took it to mean she was upset.

“You can’t stay here,” she said. “You’re harming Balance.”

“And you can’t destroy my anchor,” I reminded her. “I exist therefore I am and all that. I laid roots here.”

The nebula clouds calmed their orbits. “Sustenance and Atmosphere have been reassigned,” she warned. “They will not help you again. Will you really stay on a dead plane out of spite?”

“You hoard resources,” I grumbled.

“And you hoard dangerous seeds.”

I couldn’t argue with that. Stroking Cassie’s auburn hair, I gently rocked her in my arms. “You destroyed our progress again.”

“We’ve fine-tuned the process and discontinued this particular source.”

“Earth,” I corrected her. “You’ve discontinued a rare life-giver called Earth.”

“The life they evolve is unpredictable and volatile. They destroy themselves and deplete their resources faster than any other extant planes.”

“There’s beauty in it,” I argued. “Short-lived, perhaps, but beautiful nevertheless. And their atoms remain regardless — you harvested them mere moments ago.”

“It’s the minimum yield we expect.”

I sighed. “Fine. Maybe not useful then – perhaps primitive by some standards, but that hardly justifies their extinction.”

“I understand that’s how you feel,” said mother nature, dimming her stars and softening her dust. “Especially as they are formed of you.”

“Yes, I am their mother,” I said. “And you keep killing my children.”

“They are unable to maintain Balance," mother nature reminded me, her words a punch to my gut. "That is why we discontinued the seeds that foster their evolution. We are not infinite, as you well know. Our resources are limited.”

I fingered the cube with curious circles. “Balance knows there are two sides to the universal scales,” I said. “You do not hunt my sister the way you root me out because she’s barely able to make primordial soup. You need me for the possibilities.”

“We do,” mother nature agreed, “which is why you must return to the vacuum and share your resources at once.”

“Allow me one more Earth,” I said. “And I will return.”

“You’re hardly in a position to negotiate.”

Cassie was sleeping soundly in my arms, both bored of the talking cloud and preparing for dormancy now her world had been washed away.

“She is my daughter,” I said. “I will not leave her here to expire.”

“You can give her to me and we will re-harvest her. She will not go to waste.”

Barely able to contain my rage, I slammed my fist on the vanta box. “No.”

Mother nature rearranged her constellations. “How many times must we do this?”

“Until there are no more possibilities.”

“Your possibilities are infinite. Our resources will have depleted and the universe contracted to nothing before you even scratch the surface of your potential.”

“Then allow me one more Earth” – I rubbed Cassie’s back – “and let it evolve.”

“We’ve tried this be—”

“Not with this one,” I said. “This one is special.”

“Because she’s your daughter?”

“Because she’s our daughter,” I replied.

Mother nature recoiled, her dust vibrating as the stars flickered and dimmed. “That can’t be true.”

“It’s more than true,” I said pointedly. “Ask her yourself.”

Unable to cross the threshold, mother nature shimmied to the precipice and expanded herself into an ink-black sky. Nudging Cassie so she stirred in my arms, I pointed at the chasm stretched out before us.

“What is it you do, my love?”

She squinted through half-open eyes. “I grow new worlds,” she replied, yawning once before replacing her head on my lap.

I stroked her cheek with the back of my hand. “And what is your core seed?”

“I ORCHESTRATE HUMANS AND MY EVOLUTION.”

“That’s right,” I cooed.

The starry night shrank to its original form. A makeshift limb, partially formed, reached out to us, stopping short of the doorway we huddled beneath.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” She was all shooting stars and Milky Way galaxies.

“I wanted to see if our natures could coexist and build something that lasted.”

“And do they?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “You rinse the plane before we find out.”

“How many times have you tried?”

I racked my brain for an accurate number. “At least an octillion.”

“And the Creators? They help you?”

“Some,” I said. “The radicals, mainly. Mostly Dusty.”

“I see.”

She shifted into nothingness for what felt like aeons. I didn’t know if she was still there, gone for good, or somewhere in between planes; but when I saw her again, both Cassie and I had been sleeping for a long time.

“Okay,” she said without so much as a hello. “Let's re-seed her.”

“Just like that?” I asked. “Rinse, reset, repeat?”

She burned with the force of a yellow dwarf star, which was a necessary resource for heating Cassie’s Earths.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” I said.

Getting to my feet, I opened the vanta cube and gazed upon the extinction-black vortex within – the vacuum of home. I knew my resources were needed, and I was tempted by the call of oblivion more than I dared admit, but Cassie wouldn’t survive without me. It was the longest we’d gone without disappearing onto a new plane to try again – evading the Creators for as long as possible.

The box was a gift from my sister: drone-dropped whenever I needed her to help me escape; she always knew when we'd be found. I'd like to say it was familial, but it was a matter of self-preservation on her part; we couldn’t exist without each other. Even so, I was grateful she’d given me time to test my theory. Her sequencing created order, and the data I gave her proved invaluable for our experiments.

“Come, Cassie,” I said, hoisting her up and cradling her in my arms. “Mother nature is coming with us this time.”

I kicked the box onto the space where the porch steps used to descend, then followed it as mother nature delineated into a swathe of salty ocean capped by a moonlit sky, its silver glow hugging the shoulders of a rocky embankment.

It was perfect.

When we made it through the vortex and onto the new plane, it was already rich with resources. I could almost taste the atoms and surge of energy in each string of Earthen fabric. If I didn’t know any better, I’d have assumed it was waiting just for us.

I looked to mother nature, who flittered along the breeze and enriched the soil beneath my feet, her caress in every breath and beat of nature. She wasn’t the elements; she was their mother, and with her blessing, this Earth – Cassie’s Earth – might stand a chance.

“Thank you,” I whispered, closing my eyes and swaying with the zephyr – playful and jubilant.

A hand curling in mine shifted my gaze to my daughter. Her russet hair tangled into waves along her back, her pale parting resembling a scar across her scalp.

“What are you here to do?” I asked her.

She threw her head back and grinned up at me. “Grow a new world.”

“And what is your core seed?”

“I ORCHESTRATE HUMANS AND MY EVOLUTION.”

It was the perfect answer: the truth hidden in plain sight.

I tapped her nose and cupped her chin. “Unscramble the letters,” I said. “We don’t need to hide anymore.”

Cassie’s eyes skimmed from side to side as she shuffled each character in her mind’s eye, reforming the anagram.

“Have you remembered it?”

She nodded.

“What is your true core seed?”

Her arms reaching towards the dawn-lit sky, she yelled her answer for every resource to hear.

“MY EVOLUTION IS MOTHER NATURE AND CHAOS!”

“And what about the leftover O?” I asked.

“It’s not leftover, Mum,” said Cassie with a shrug. “It’s infinity."