“You know what’s weird?”
Arkay grunted, trying to find a more comfortable position. “What’s weird? Aside from the fact that you’re talking to me while you work and I’m hiding in an air duct, trying to avoid existence and responsibilities?”
Teekay shrugged at Arkay’s comment. He was quite happy, leaning back in his chair, filing his claws down. By his side were a large hot chocolate and a half-finished bowl of cereal. “Oh, it’s just that I’ve only ever seen one of you.”
“What do you mean by that?” Arkay clearly sounded confused and disgruntled, but that was probably little to do with Teekay and more to do with the fact that the little Decayling was obviously depressed.
“I’ve seen two other Teekays in my long life. Both woven from the same cyclical cloth I was. A fuckton of universes loop, so seeing copies of yourself isn’t that uncommon. But I’ve only ever seen one you.”
“I don’t follow…” Arkay grumbled some more, before rolling over onto his back. This was much more comfortable, and Teekay could immediately tell that Arkay seemed slightly better.
“Alright, so, most universes kinda loop in some way. The same general series of events happen, causing a Big Bounce. A universe explodes from a Big Bang, expands into a normal universe then, at its end, shrinks back down into nothing, before exploding into another Big Bang. You get that, right?”
Arkay nodded. “Yeah, I do. But how does that work with universes made by deities?”
“In a similar way…” Teekay explained. “Difference is that a deity will make a universe, create some deities in said universe, then either use those deities’ corpses as seeds for a new universe or those deities kill the main deity and make a new universe. They become a vicious circle of deities accidentally recreating the deities they killed to become deities in the first place.”
“I… still don’t get it…” Arkay admitted.
“I’ll use our universe as an example. There was once a universe which birthed Kinisis. She wasn’t always a Life Goddess, she started off somewhere. When her universe died, she became a deity and made her own universe. Or a few, I dunno. She then made the universe in which we were born. When that universe died, she took you and the Whenvern and whatever and made you into a god in the universe you just escaped from. When Kinisis and that universe die, the Whenvern goes on to make his own universe. In that universe, a being is born which eventually becomes Kinisis. And so the cycle continues.”
“Okay? So it’s all a vicious cycle?”
“I think so. My belief is that there’s like, five steps. The universe that makes Kinisis, then the couple of universes Kinisis makes, then the one where you become Arkadin, then a universe afterwards created by you. The universe you make gives birth to Kinisis once more. And from each of these universes, a couple of grains of sand manage to escape and go and do their own thing. I escaped from Kinisis’s universe and broke out of the cycle. But because it’s a cycle, that means I’ve escaped from each iteration of the cycle, meaning there’s more than one of me. We’re not exactly the same, because each cycle is only similar, not identical, but we all exist as separate iterations of those grains of sand escaping from the cycle.”
“But there’s only one of me?”
“Yeah. Because you broke the cycle, you broke out and now the universe that would have birthed Kinisis can’t actually exist. Normally, the cycle would have continued endlessly, with you making a universe, dying and spawning Kinisis, who would then eventually respawn you. But it can’t now because something fundamentally broke it.”
Arkay grunted. He finally understood what Teekay was saying, but he didn’t like any of it.
“Can we talk about something else, please?” Arkay eventually asked. “This is hurting my head.
“Sure thing!” Teekay grinned. “It’s food for thought though.”
“Yeah, just… not today. Some other time.”
“Of course…” Teekay trailed off. “Some other time…”