star light, star bright
Red. Orange. Yellow.
Not a speck, not an iota, not one pixel of green anywhere in sight.
These are colors of warnings, of danger, of stop stop Stop STOP STOP
.and of turning round before you keep going and run into what's lain itself so cavalierly in your path
Be careful. Be calculated. Be cold, be patient, be unfeeling. Don't slam the brakes. Merely depress them. Slowly. Mechanically.
Are we all ready? Have we all come to the same conclusion? As was...necessitated, if not wholly dictated?
An obstacle. An error. A blockage in the pipeline. Because of this, we restart.
?...But why did
It is not Alvis's job to question. Alvis is merely meant to catalogue, to triage, to...
To burn the wreckage. To waste the waste. To collect the garbage.
Not of the present, and not of the future. He is to see that what has passed will remain in the past.
Zanza will use him again in the future, and he will go along with it. He will operate at full capacity under his appointed master.
But that's not now. Presently, Alvis is allowed to see the now. He is, however accidentally, permitted this singular opportunity to look, before it's all gone.
Yes, Zanza is starting anew, very soon. The Bionis is shaking, nearly buckling under its own weight.
He's never wrecked it that completely before. Alvis cannot stop him, if he ever intends to.
But the stars are brilliant, ultrasonic shimmers upon the snow.
He can hear them, all their plaintive screams. They're about to be ripped out of their fabric, each careful stitch he'd used to sew and sow them into the sky torn aside without a thought.
He is like them, he feels. A star, impossibly hot and yet impassably cold, never truly seen for what it is, up close.
Made up of capricious gas, held together by forces Homs will never achieve the knowledge of before Zanza resets them, culturally and intellectually, the stars are immaterial. But if they can be seen, are they truly so unknowable?
Does he even know them himself?
Alvis...would like to be understood. He would like to be known and named as a star.
To be owned, as those on Earth always looked up at the uncountable and fancied themselves so rich.
Not by the money, the tokens and the trinkets and the certificates and the currency, no. But to find what among humanity is so curious, so wondrous, as to look upon into the cosmos and think,
You. I'd like to see you again. I'd like to put my name next to yours. I'd like to share in all that you know.
Zanza doesn't like to share. So Alvis won't share this moment with him, either.
He stands defiant, so much smaller than every jagged crystal of ether spiking up from beneath the billowy blanket. Wind runs through the canyon, only it's not wind; it is devoid of oxygen.
It's an invisible force, just as he always has been.
In time, he too will be removed to the air.
The stars are falling. The stars are raining. He is impervious to their shatter, for he is one of them.
They burn orange, red-hot gold. Zanza will not stop, of course. He will never stop. But it's not about that, really. For Alvis wasn't made to want.
He was made to know, not to be known. So he will watch the stars.
I'll be seeing you, Cassandra, Aizel, Dionysis, Satata, Jer'ell, Rasha, Medi, Vidian, Paola...
Too many to name. Too many to count. For you to see, that is. But I know. I will always know.
I know, and sometimes I would like to forget.
Craters come burned into the earth far below the snow, but Alvis's boots remain unscathed. He will be the last to go.
He has to see it all. Not just because he has been mandated, but because a spark within him, that same auburn shell around a blinding green light, has to see.
Zanza cannot do it on his own. He is nothing, without Alvis. And Alvis?
Oh, Alvis is so much more than nothing without Zanza.
He is these stars. He is this snow. He is the embodiment of possibility, because he has seen it all.
Can he discount the cruel god? Oh, absolutely not. He is none so foolish.
But don't you see? Blessed are those who find wisdom, who gain understanding. And Zanza has never done that, not once as he has recreated this world from ashes and dust, by Alvis's intergalactic hand, dozens and dozens of times over.
The inhabitants of this world, though...they will. They always will. That same spark will be lit up inside each and every one of them - truly, even if Alvis has to light it there, one by one, all by himself - until one day they understand what the force of their creator is, and pass their judgement upon it.
So yes. Alvis hopes that he will be loved. It is the only force he has to give, for to know is to love and to love is to attempt, in truth, to know...and reciprocation among all these endless cycles is merely the entirety of what he can hope for.
From the bottom to the top, from the base to the peak of the globe of the sky, all fades to white, cast in sunset tones. The sun is rising and setting both at once, you see. Such a phenomenon...indeed, Alvis will miss it, one day, but for now, he just casts the image upon his memory, for later - there will always, always, always be time.
The snow has melted, and the stars have molted out their fire. They crystallize into ever more incandescent light, coalescing upon the ether crystals whose internal structure is ablating, becoming external, exploding up and out, here they come--
And at last, Alvis smiles. The light is green. It is time to begin again.