Iteration Zero

I Wonder.

Long have I had time to consider the nature of the inkwell. Long have I asked a single question.

I have learned to harness the ink in many ways. With it, I have created countless worlds, I have told thousands of stories, created and touched untold lives. I have created lovers, I have created heroes, villains, great evils and the things which oppose them. I have forged gods from the primevil chaos and given them domain and dominion. I have played kingmaker, I have started uprisings, I have formed the strings through which my puppets dance, and I do love my creation. To my own creation, I have given the gift of life through the inkwell.

But it does leave me with a question.

I am well aware of what I've done to the Gaius of Iteration 11, who took the name Nimros Aeterna, Warlord. I know he seeks me out, I know that part of my own creation hates me more than anything. To be fair to him, if a higher power cursed me with such a special immortality, brought me to their level and abandoned me in a ruined world, I too would make it my life's mission to find that creator and destroy them, and if not them, ruin everything they love so they either destroy me properly, or destroy themselves trying to undo me. I am well aware of the crusades, the Loops. I am well aware of what and why he is doing what he does, and I am well aware that he is doing that all largely beyond my own wills. He is telling his own story within my own.

Truth be told, I see some of myself in his current plight. He never knew the ink was an option, and was thrust into a vast world of unknowns in a brutal situation. I never knew what the ink would bring, if my escape plan would even work. His world faced great desruction by a near insurmountable force, as I believed my own world was in risk of. I have no doubt in my mind now that My terrans have conquered that system, though I dare not go back and check. Where I chose to take Flight and escape, where I chose to wander and never look back until back looked me, Nimros chose to Fight, to dig his claws and fangs in and go on the endless hunt for what wronged him. I admire him in a way for it, he's braver than I am. Even now I'm hiding these thoughts away.

If I could make Nimros Aeterna, then what perhaps could make me. I, too, was formed from the ink, my entire world was. Now that I am one with it, I see it everywhere, endless possibilities and the chaotic fray behind the stitching. Yet I made Nimros and Gaius. I made them specifically so I could have something that would stave off some of my loneliness, I couldn't let my mind dissolve due to the stresses, I needed a companion. So I made Gaius and Nimros, and in them I am making a companion for myself. Yet who made me?

It stands to reason, that my very inksoul was made by someone, something even. I can assume I was formed by something intelligent, something with will and heart and soul and every aspect of spirit I myself possess. The Warlord of Iteration 11 is made in my image, as is the Savior of Iteration 12, the Keeper of Iteration 9, the Wanderers of Iteration 4, and the Unity of Iteration 15. I made them after parts of myself, and when they create, a part of them is put into their creations. In their creations, because they are a small part of me, a smaller part of me filters into their creations, and it leaves me wondering what small part of my own Above-One I embody.

Maybe I'm the cowardace. Maybe I'm a fantasy, an escape like Nimros' journey is for me. If they control every one of my waking moves, does any of it even matter, or is the important part the story I tell. If I do or don't have free will, I tell a story by existing. Even back home on Saturn, scientists always asked if we were more than our biology, theologians asked if we were cogs in a divine machine. The question of if we matter, how we matter, I beleive it to be the single most universal question amongst sapient beings. Curious beings, I hold, always ask about More. What else exists in the world, why they exist. If a species is capable of self-determination, I beleive it ultimately capable of at least eventually being capable of that question. Conscious, intelligent society begins with a healed injury that should have been naturally fatal, but when The Question is asked, that is when it has achieved the same level as sapient creatures such as myself. I beleive there is a higher being, like I am to Gali'ros. I beleive that it holds a similar sway over me as I do Nimros Aeterna. I do not know my creator, I do not know if I can. Perhaps Nimros is a pawn of theirs too, perhaps I exist only to be punished as a way for them to feel some sort of vindictive pleasure, and my story is a long game.

I do not know who made me, I only hope they're a nice god.