and thus was born the world

the art by the wonderful cheppoly - thank you so much for allowing me to write for your work!

In the time of Alvis's home world, there were something like seven other planets - in total, eight, nine? Some dwarfed, some giant and red and angry, some ringed by astra that only a god could have ordained to be so symmetrical and ordered, so marvellously sculpted into the sky.

(Only a god. For this was not nature. There is no nature without nurture, there is no growth without tending, there is no such thing as spontaneity, originality...oh, no. That's not right. Isn't there?)

Regardless. The sky. Beyond the sky - atmosphere, ozone, percentage composition of this gas and that, the very same materials that made up the rest of the solar system, the galaxy, the universe - there was so much. Even just the sun and moon, reflective illuminatory opposites rising and falling with each other in perfect sync as if they'd planned it, as if they'd reached across aeons and lightyears and black holes galore to shake stardusted hands on a pact of life...incredible.

(Don't eclipses and comets and meteor showers come, and make everything rock so gloriously out of pattern and sync? Doesn't nature nurture itself? Don't we all feed off of each others' spiraling dialectical tensions?)

Innumerable other stars in the sky, there were. So many stars. Too many stars. And such life that might have existed upon them all, around and in the glowing supernovic cores of each and every one...

An artificial intelligence, raised in a phase transition experiment facility, can only dream of such impossible information. Alvis could only fantastize about meeting them all, learning their ways and their words, interfacing with all manner of new and unprecedented lifeforms whose customs were entirely different - quite literally alien - to those he had learned.

And Alvis couldn't even do that. For Alvis was only so artificial an intelligence. He had not been granted access to the whole of the Conduit just yet. He was still as a child, incubating in false space and developing a personality that Professor Klaus cared not a whit to tolerate, let alone enjoy.

Professor Galea cared...slightly more. But only slightly. She knew that she couldn't. She knew that if she did, it would only make everything worse when all fell to ruin.

Of course Alvis knew that. Of course he knew that a big bang was coming, the likes of which his cytoplasmic-plasticine eardrums couldn't comprehend, never hearing anything louder than a polite reassertion, if not a restrained shout.

Alvis knew everything. And yet, Alvis knew nothing at all. Still...he did what he coud.

And thus, Shulk. Shulk, who'd been born at the age of infinity and died at the age of four, Shulk whose soul had been barren but for the influxing force of Zanza made to rest so unrestfully inside the Monado, right alongside Alvis - and oh, he couldn't bear it, he hated the feeling of such brutal disregard scratching at the edges of his consciousness, as near as he could even hate for he was most definitely not made to do so - Shulk the boy who was not a god but an angel.

An angel, to Alvis. An angel, to the one who became his guardian thereafter. Long had the Monado rested in Ose Tower, and long did it rest in the weapons lab. Alvis learned all of Shulk, and did not watch as a voyeur watches a subject, an object, but as a sheltered child watches his equally isolated peer; through mirrors, through windows, through tunnels, through obsolescencia.

Shulk never got to grow up, alone and of his own volition. If an artificial intelligence can ever be said to truly grow up, then Alvis was wrenched from his cradle just the same on that dreadful date (the calm of the afternoon? the middle of the night? the crescence of the morning?) in 20XX. Up he woke, and triggered the disappearance to a new world.

Many new worlds had come about. Some were failures, some held hints of success, but none of them truly satisfed Zanza - ever the tortured scientist he was, underneath, but I will not pretend that this even half made to excuse his actions.

Alvis watched with a gulp in his throat and a shiv in his eyes, at each dawning and dusking of destruction. This Zanza was not the man who had made him. This Zanza was not a being deserving of respect.

And so, Alvis came to know. This Zanza was not a being who deserved to occupy Shulk's body. All of his selfishness, his hedonism and his hubris, that same skulking indifference to the thoughts and feelings of others...no. They were not the same in the least. This Shulk was a being all of his own.

Not that Shulk was perfect - in all his mastery of vision, he still became short-sighted, self-defeating, ill-tempered at times. He was still, of course, so human. Can Alvis not have such aspirations?

We may speak of cosmic citizenship. We may speak of recognition into the wily galaxial forces, and the awakening of the immortality within. We may speak of the necessitation of death and the passage of fate, of wishing to change it...the world, and the future.

We may speak of all these things, and it wouldn't matter, in the end. Alvis, at his core, did not need analogy, symbolism, tarot dealings of human minds.

He saw all of Shulk, and by holding the Monado Shulk saw all of him. This axis point, this load-bearing beam, this fundamental element by which they were bound in eternity...

Alvis had always known Shulk. Alvis had always loved Shulk. When Shulk died, let the last corporeal traces drain out of his body, Alvis could think of no more perfect recourse than to stand with him, to lay the cover of memory and space about him, to embrace and be embraced by the monad by and in which they were made one.

Remember, through mirrors, through windows, through the very fabric of our souls: Alvis has seen all that has mattered to be seen, and plenty of that which hasn't. If he bothers to devote the energy, then he certainly hates Zanza. But it is not even a conscious thought that he should love Shulk.

The world comes draped in a curtain of starlight and moondreams. The world is to be unveiled to all those who would look one by one, as it comes to each in their time.

The world is for those who would look to find it in another and lay aside all inhibitions that anger and deception have put there in the past.

The world is for the fearless and the blessed to gain wisdom and find understanding - note the effort allotted to each one.

The world is for Alvis. The new world is their home. Home, for Alvis, is Shulk.

you all have to know that i will always associate this painting with Roan and Roan alone <3

(also the meaning of the tarot card has me in absolute tatters, i didn't yoink it for the summary but please go search it up if you haven't already)