I wanted to be an astronaut when I was younger, walk on the moon, fly around in a rocket, zap aliens with a laser gun, teleport across galaxies. I've done a lot more than that in the years since, boldly going places where no man would ever want to go. Still, that love of spacemen and rockets remains, and when Raz tells me we're heading for a spaceship, I fill with excitement. But when we slide through the window, it's into a large room of concrete walls, boxes stacked neatly to the sides, fluorescent lights overhead. There's a small garden in the middle of the room.
"This isn't a spaceship," I grumble. "Spaceships are made of metal, full of stuff like..." I stop, realizing how ridiculous that sounds. Spaceships in movies and comics might be like that. But in the real world, built by beings of another planet, why should they be?
"Precisely," Raz says. "This is a massive craft designed to navigate the vastness of space. It is the size of a city, home to two million creatures. They fled their dying planet long ago and have sailed among the stars ever since.
"Now eat."
"Eat what?" I ask, looking around.
"Anything," Raz says. "The crates are packed with nutritious substances. And there are bottles of liquid in those." He points at the boxes to my left.
"Won't anyone mind?" I ask nervously, not wanting to get on the wrong side of short-tempered aliens.
"These are excess supplies. Nobody will notice."
I shuffle over to the crates and lift off the lid of the nearest box. There are large plastic bottles inside. The liquid in them is an unpleasant green color. The stench, when I snap the top off, is vile.
"Are you sure this is safe?" I ask.
"Yes."
"Why aren't you drinking any?"
"I don't need it."
Skeptical, I raise the bottle and take a sip. It's disgusting! I spit it out and grimace, then reluctantly drain a mouthful and swish it around. The taste doesn't improve, but after half a minute of swishing, I gulp, then lower the bottle and wait to be sick. When nothing happens, I drink some more, then look for something to sink my teeth into. The food is as unappealing as the liquid, but it fills me up. When my stomach can hold no more, I wipe my lips with a hand and glance at Raz.
"Done?" he asks.
"Done," I confirm.
"Are you ready to go on a quick tour?"
"Can I?" I ask eagerly.
"I know you want to. I can disguise us to look like natives."
"Great! Let's do it."
Leaving the storeroom, we walk down a long corridor, then take an elevator to an upper level. It looks remarkably like the elevators on Earth.
"You shouldn't be surprised," Raz says. "We sowed the seeds of intelligence among most of the universe's beings, and the rest were assisted by those we first helped. There are many similarities between species."
The elevator comes to a halt and the doors slide open. I step out into a noisy street that could be any of Earth's busier cities. Buildings like ours, vehicles that look like cars, streetlamps and power cables. The only difference is that instead of a sky, there's another level overhead. Otherwise it's unnervingly familiar.
The same can't be said for the people. They have no human traits. Long tendrils instead of arms and legs. Their faces, which are in the middle of their bodies, have several gloopy eyes set in a semi-circle around a small, toothless mouth. No ears or nose. Each is a mix of colors. They're slimy, dripping freely as they pass. Smaller creatures feast on the mucus, an army of insect-like slime-eaters who gobble it up, keeping the paths clean.
I stare for a long time at the aliens, then glance at Raz and myself and frown. "We don't look any different. I thought you were going to disguise us."
"I haven't altered our bodies," Raz says. "I'm affecting the visual sensors of those around us, so that to their eyes we appear as they do. Yes," he adds with a grin before I can say anything, "that is pretty cool."
We wander down the street. I peer in windows as we pass, and even enter a few of the buildings, trying to figure out what the stores are selling, what the creatures are doing, what the buildings are for. Raz whispers in my ear as we wind our way down the street, then turn into another, and another, exploring.
"When the Kah-Gash split, the pieces of its soul shot off ahead of the blast, traveling faster than light or any of the other forces unleashed by the explosion. They darted in and out of the new universes, passing from one to the other as they flew farther apart.
"Eventually they slowed and drifted. Sometimes they floated across realms like cosmic butterflies. Other times they disappeared from one part of a universe and popped up on the opposite side in the blink of an eye.
"The patches of light you have seen since birth are physical remnants of the Kah-Gash. There were barriers of energy and magic between the squares of the original universe. When the Kah-Gash exploded, the barriers shattered, but their fragments were used to stitch the fabric of the new universes together. It took us a long time to realize that, since we cannot see them."
"You can't see the lights?" I frown.
"No," Raz says. "They only reveal themselves to the eyes of the Kah-Gash."
"I don't understand."
"There are three parts of the Kah-Gash," Raz says. "The trigger, memory, and eyes. The trigger is the commanding force. The memory stores all that happens. The eyes see the hidden strings which bind the universes in place.
"This only became clear to us over the long course of time. In the beginning we didn't know how many pieces there were, what function they played, where they'd gone. We were not even sure that parts of the Kah-Gash still existed.
"The Demonata knew no more than we did, but threw themselves into the search. Their desperate plan was to find the parts of the Kah-Gash, reassemble them, and restore the original universe. It's a plan they haven't wavered from.
"For a time we saw no threat. We thought it was a fool's quest. But then the parts began to reappear. They had the ability to turn up anywhere, in a comet, a rock, a tree, an animal, even one of the new demons. The pieces never merged with any of the Old Creatures or original demons, but all other forms were fair game. They caused no harm, existing in harmony with their hosts, but their reemergence filled us with panic."
Raz shivers, then continues. "The Demonata pursued the pieces with a mad passion. When they finally found one, they experimented, seeking ways to harness its power. They found they could influence its destination when it moved from one form to another, ensuring it stayed within their grasp.
"The demons searched hard for the other pieces. They couldn't cross from their universe to ours, but they didn't need to. The parts of the Kah-Gash passed freely between universes. The Demonata could wait, even though it might take billions of years."
We come to another elevator and ride it down to a random lower level. I find a park, full of strangely shaped trees and bushes. I dodge between them as Raz speaks.
"We couldn't let them reunite the Kah-Gash," Raz says. "We felt responsible for this universe's new life-forms. They were simple creatures, but they had a right to exist. So we counter plotted. Although the demons couldn't cross universes, we had the power to enter theirs. We launched a raiding party. After a brief battle, we freed the piece of the Kah-Gash and fled. The Demonata couldn't follow. All they could do was keep searching and waiting.
"That's how things continued over millions of years," Raz says as if talking about the passing of a couple of weeks. "The Demonata imprisoned pieces of the Kah-Gash. We crossed, fought, and freed them."
"Are you stronger than the demons?" I ask.
"No," Raz says. "But we only needed to destroy the form in which a piece was stuck. When that happened, it shot free. If the demons had been able to focus, they could have directed it into another form of their choosing, but we distracted them.
"We also searched for pieces in our universe," Raz goes on. "We had no wish to reassemble the Kah-Gash, but we hoped to capture the pieces and hold them from the Demonata forever. We learned to influence the pieces, but only as the Demonata did. We can keep them in place awhile, but eventually they slip free."
"Is that the same when the demons capture them?" I ask.
"Yes."
"Then why worry?" I shrug. "If they can't hold on to a piece forever, they can't collect them all, can they?"
"Unfortunately, yes," Raz says. "Sometimes all three pieces exist in a universe at the same time, as they do now. When I say we can't hold on to a piece for long, I mean tens of thousands of years. That's more than enough time for the Demonata to unite the parts. All they need is a lucky break.
"So we continued to fight," Raz says wearily. "Every time they captured a piece, we set it free. It could have gone on like that until the end of time, except there were casualties. Some of us always died when we raided. A few here, a few there. When you add them up over millions, then billions of years..." He shudders.
"We're not afraid of death," Raz says. "But we couldn't continue that way indefinitely, because-"
"-you can't have children," I interrupt, beating him to the punch.
"Correct." He smiles sadly. "At some point we would become extinct. Then the demons would be free to track down the pieces of the Kah-Gash and restore the original universe, only this time it would be exclusively theirs.
"We couldn't accept such a fate, so we did something we were never meant to. We played god and interfered with the creatures of the new universe. We've been paying for that mistake ever since. And the universe has been paying for it too."
Raz turns his face away and says with shame, "We're the reason the Demonata can cross from their universe to ours." He brushes a hand across his cheeks, and though I can't be certain, I think the Old Creature is wiping away guilty tears.