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- Herausgeber: T.A. Thomas
- Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
- Sprache: Englisch
In a society of gods, creating worlds has become an art form, a noble occupation that only the specialized world-builders are allowed to pursue.
Henry Young is such a world-builder; it is his day job. He has even developed an easy-to-use tool to create new worlds without breaking the multitude of world-building regulations. However, his new tool quickly falls into the hands of his inquisitive six-year-old daughter.
Step into Mara's world; a world of wonder, imagination, unicorns and devout colour-changing Marans. But will the critical world-building community accept a world created by a child?
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020
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T.A. Thomas
MARA’S WORLD
Table of contents
Part 1 Genesis
Part 2 Imminent Destruction
Part 3 Trials and Tribulations
Part 4 The Victory of Ages
Part 1 Genesis
Ren stepped through the revolving doors and into the Grand Hall of Worlds. He was immediately surrounded by the dark and seemingly endless space that filled the Grand Hall. All around him small luminescent flecks floated in the black emptiness. He looked back at the lavishly decorated revolving doors, where his friend Ax stood gaping at the wonders before him.
“Seriously, you have never been in here before?” Ren asked, his words echoing through the immense space.
Ax answered while he continued gaping at the millions of glowing specks around him. “Never. My dad isn’t a famous world-builder like yours, you know. To me, this stuff is just another boring course at school.”
Ren had to admit “It is a pretty boring subject when you’re just listening to Mr Hammel droning on about it in the classroom, or studying it in a book, but here among the actual end product, it’s pretty cool. Come on I want to show you something.”
They walked further into the dark atmosphere of the hall, while Ren navigated them to a particular spot among the lights and stopped. It was then that Ax noticed that the entrance doors had disappeared in the darkness.
“Where is the exit? How are we going to get back?”
“Don’t worry. The exit lights up when you want to leave again. Remember, this place was built by the experts.” Ren answered in a calming voice, while he raised his arm to swipe away a cluster of lights. He tapped the cluster that was behind it and dragged it forward. It zoomed in before them, all the specks of lights getting bigger, their shapes starting to morph from uniform blobs of light into a myriad of different objects. Ax could see suns, planets, moons, nebulas, asteroids, comets, and a thousand objects he couldn’t even identify. Ren pushed the objects around a bit looking for something specific. He stopped when a purple moon appeared before them.
“This is it,” Ren said. “The moon of Aphoria; Aphoria is the bright green planet you see behind it, but its moon is the interesting bit. The Aphorians use it as a holiday retreat. It has its own atmosphere, ecosystem, and climate; tropical of course. The Alphorian galaxy was created by Saforia Pellex, she’s an awesome world-builder. She added it to the Grand Hall three years ago, but has returned here perfecting it several times.”
“I like the colour.” Ax remarked.
Ren explained “It’s the red sunlight that interacts with the blue atmosphere of the moon that gives it that vibrant violet hue. But you haven’t seen the best part yet.” Ren made a few hand gestures and they zoomed in further on Aphoria’s moon. Lush tropical vegetation, fabulous beaches and tasteful resorts with immense swimming pools came into view.”
“Wow!” Ax exclaimed. His eyes opened even further when Ren zoomed in a few taps more. “Are those the Aphorians?” The most beautiful creatures came into view, lounging by the pools, drinking at the bars, swimming in the oceans. The males were tall and powerfully built yet slender and elegant. They walked with purpose and grace, their long, fine tails balancing their stride. But it was the females that Ax was gaping at. Every one of them was sculpted to perfection, yet distinctly different. Their skin glowed softly with a low blue light, enhanced by the red sunlight they bathed in. Their bathing suits framed perfect and highly arousing curves from every angle. Ax and Ren were teenagers, so Aphoria’s moon was pretty much the most entertaining item in the Grand Hall at their age.
Ax pointed at a female Aphorian stepping out of the waves onto one of the beaches. “Zoom in on that one.”
Ren brought up a detailed view of the luscious Aphorian female.
Ax leaned closer to Ren and quietly asked “So can we do more than just watch? Can we actually go to that moon?”
Ren sighed. “Technically, we can, and there aren’t exactly any rules for this kind of thing, but messing with other peoples’ creations is really not done. It would be like adding a few doodles with crayon to a great painting or chipping away a few details of a beautiful sculpture, so basically, watch but don’t touch.”
They quietly watched the beautiful Aphorian a while longer, found out her name was Arithea, saw her turn away several male suitors at a bar until she returned to her room in one of the spectacularly designed buildings.
Ren zoomed out again.
“Aphoria prime is not without its problems but that moon is a spectacular example of modern world-building. Saforia Pellex followed all the rules and it resulted in a work of art.”
“I don’t understand why there have to be so many rules. It took me ages studying those and I still barely passed the test last semester.” Ax complained.
“There weren’t any rules back when our people first started building worlds. Anyone could create anything, even flat worlds, no thicker than a pizza, but most of those worlds failed. They lacked balance and life on them, burned out, or never even sparked into existence in the first place. By the time my father started his career, most of the mandatory world-building regulations were in place and the success rate for new worlds had increased spectacularly as a result. My father started the process of setting up additional guidelines and recommendations after what happened to his Veden project.”
“Veden? I don’t remember that one.” Ax said.
“That’s because it is not mentioned in the literature. My father made sure of that.” Ren walked a few meters to the left and brought up a completely different galaxy. He zoomed in on the second planet counting from the yellow sun.
“That’s Veden?” Ax asked.
“It is.” When it was added to the Hall, it was widely regarded as a masterpiece; beautifully balanced, unprecedented biodiversity and a prime example of cutting edge evolution principles. I was just a baby at the time, but I know from the family photo albums and the stories my mother told me, that my father was very proud of Veden at the time. By the time I was ten, millions of years of evolution had passed on Veden and things were seriously starting to go wrong. The leading belief at the time when Veden was created was that evolution had to be left free of interference; if set up right, evolution would balance itself.”
“So what went wrong on Veden? There is even a hole in their atmosphere, I see.” Ax asked, pointing at the planet’s South Pole.
“Well, you know that one of the modern guidelines for setting up evolution is that the world builder must select which species will become the dominant species on the planet. That selection must meet that long list of criteria we had to memorize last year. My father designed that guideline after Veden failed. The species that developed on Veden was a very aggressive and competitive one. Those primal instincts never really left them when they developed higher intelligence. They waged war after war after war, all the while pursuing a rampant and aggressive industrialization with planet-wide toxic pollution as a by-product. This destroyed the beautifully crafted balance of Veden. The planet was here in the Hall for all to see, and the deterioration of my father’s masterpiece was exploited eagerly by the media. Almost everyone has forgotten about it now, but my father still refuses to speak about Veden to this day.”
Ax made a small gesture below the blue planet. It brought up the number of visitors who had viewed Veden in the Grand Hall. There were only nine viewings in the last year.
“Those are all mine,” Ren said. “I check up on Veden regularly.”
“Why?” Ax asked. “It sounds like your father’s greatest failure.”
“Maybe it is. But if you look closely you’ll see that some of the inhabitants are trying to correct the imbalance themselves. I believe these vedens realize what they’ve done and more and more of them are trying to repair their planet. In my opinion, a less aggressive species would not do that.”
“That is a very revolutionary idea, Ren. Maybe, one day you will have as much of an impact in the world-building community as your father has.” Ax said.
