Nano Bytes - A Collection of Short SciFi Stories

God of Vowels and Breeze by MagnusAntonLekaj

Aeoyella Eeanon's friends called her Vowels because of the many in her name. She had expected something related to her frizzy hair or the enormous reading-glasses she wore doing the daily crossword puzzle, but Vowels stuck because that's how nicknames work. She didn't complain and grew to like it. Not that she told them for fear they would change it to something terrible. Kids had done that when she was little and it irritated her how it felt all these years later. Even in the darkness where nothing seemed to exist, not even light from a distant star. Even in the nothing, where not even darkness seemed to exist the way darkness existed everywhere else. Even in the dark nothing and the nothing dark... cruelty from long ago still hurt.

Vowels had experienced fear for so long she almost didn't remember a time when it wasn't her only emotion. The physical pressure around her had long ago felt unusual, pushing away from her body yet against her lungs, that it made her feel like a dead tree trunk submerged in a hollow drowning. She could sense the essence of her soul draining... slowly... disappearing, but so slowly that it wasn't enough to kill her. Vowels wanted to cry but the tears would not flow. Her insides felt turned over and inside out the way they had the few times she'd skydived back on Earth. She was in a forever fall of emptiness and had been for a time longer than she could imagine counting.

"Why am I not dead?" she tried to say but no sound escaped. She should be dead. Vowels had not eaten nor slept nor laughed, cried, nor breathed in so long. I haven't touched anything or anyone in as forever as I can see into forever. I wish I was dead. Please let me be dead. She'd thought some version of those things more often than could be counted but nothing changed. She couldn't even remember how she got here. She'd been on an interstellar cruiser at some point but when or where... she'd forgotten a thousand or a million years ago. What she remembered clearly was a crack and then this coffin of doom where she couldn't tell if her eyes were open or closed.

Something suddenly breezed past. "God," the breeze whispered, startling her out of the perpetual fear.

"What?" she tried to say but the words would not escape.

"Open your eyes," the breeze gently whispered. Its sound was the greatest comfort she'd ever known.

She tried to comply but nothing happened. If her eyes were open she couldn't see anything. "I can't," she tried to say but no sound was made.

"Because you won't see," said the breeze, then nudged her and she felt her body spin. "You have to open your eyes to see, or you'll be here for an ever that will be forever to you but no time for me." The breeze pushed her harder and Vowels felt her body accelerate. Within moments she felt the fear return as her velocity increased exponentially each second. The breeze was now with her creating a feeling of falling within an atmosphere. After so much time in the nothing, momentum and actual sense of her body was both exhilarating and disturbing.

"Am I dreaming?" she asked and this time Vowels heard her voice dancing on the breeze. It was thrilling to hear it again. She tried to open her eyes to see if she'd wake up but there was nothing.

"No," the breeze said with what sounded like sadness. "You are not asleep, I am afraid. You've been lost for a long time out here because you refused to see."

"See what?" she said behind the frustration of too-much-time spent waiting for death.

"The truth of the nothing," the breeze answered, angering Vowels.

"The truth of nothing? All I see is nothing! How do I need to see the truth of nothing that I can't see when all I see is nothing?" Though it was the first friend she'd had in a million years, the breeze was speaking in a painfully needless riddle. "Just say what I have to do, please. Please. Don't tell me I refuse to see. Tell me how to see. Please!" she pleaded.

"That you are the god."

"I am God? That's insane."

"No. Well, yes. You are not the God, if that even is a thing," the breeze countered, "you are the god. Soft the."

Vowels laughed to herself but that didn't reverberate off the breeze for her to hear. "I'm pretty convinced now I'm either sleeping or in some coma-dream. I am not god. I'm not sure of anything right now except that."

"That is why you are stuck here," the breeze said softly. "Your mind won't let you see that you are not where you expect to be. Just moments ago in my world your character left the solar system of the world you created, off on an interstellar travel it trained for. This was what you programmed for your character's story. When you reached beyond the zone of creation, the world reset but your mind refused to go offline, thinking it was still the character Vowels. We found a tiny glitch in your code and fixed it but still you did not come offline. We don't want to force your mind awake since it could damage real memories. It seems your digital life had too strong an impact on you. But I promise, if you simply open your eyes, you will see that you are the god and you are home."

Vowels, tried to open her eyes for the next thousand years until somehow the light broke and she was awake in a bed, attached to tubes and wires. She still felt like Vowels not god. "Hello?" she asked in a man's voice.

"Welcome back, game optimization developer 87," said the breeze. "We had to force you offline. Do you feel alright?"

Vowels screamed.

The End

~~~

MagnusAntonLekaj is an avid writer from Iceland; living in the USA. His stories are usually told from the women's perspective but sometimes you'll find a male perspective among is work as well.