Wave Goodbye

Cloudfall almost killed him. He’d arrived on Verdant during thirdcycle when the sudden burst of water and biomass knocked him off his feet and sent him sluicing down into the Well.

Only the Mistery had saved him. One of the chanters saw his tell-tale thinsuit boots among the flotsam of the cloudfall and threw a net his way. He’d tangled to a halt a few feet above the lip of the Well, and a chorus of chanters hauled him back from the brink along with a day’s catch of junkwood.

None of his saviors seemed to think it remarkable. When he’d tried to express his thanks to the chanters and apologize for interrupting the Mistery, they had simply spread their hands palm up and raised them in the gesture of the Inevitable. An offering and excuse. He was to die anyway. To the chanters, all would perish in the Collapse. A desirable and necessary end for the people of the Verdant.

It made Henri Tattersol question why he’d transversed three universes to save a race so intent on (even blissful of) its own destruction. They welcomed the Collapse. Every Cloudfall brought it closer, and, with their elongated throats, the chanters trumpeted their impending doom in a harmonious chorus of celebration.

As Henri checked his thinsuit for damage, a high chanter approached with a maiden of the Mistery. In spite of the impossible humidity of the Verdant, her hair bounced in thousands of luxuriant curls creating tribolectric vortices the maiden could channel. With a casual stroke of her hand through lush ringlets, Henri knew she could fling a bolt of energy that even his thinsuit would be unable to ground. He bowed low to her.

“Name us, Henri Tattersol of the Terraverse,” she commanded in the very difficult greeting ritual of the Verdant. The most direct consequence of the Inevitable was that the maidens of Verdant were supremely confident they knew pretty much everything and outsiders were therefore tiresome.

The maiden was baiting him with the Inevitable, in essence, saying, “Tell us what we don’t already know that we’ve always known and that a hapless creature such as yourself could scarcely comprehend.”

Inwardly, Henri cursed the maiden’s smugness, her sureness of the Inevitable, and her damn Cloudfall that pristinely purged Verdant’s thick atmosphere and rainforests every thirdcycle. But, the growing evidence of a massive wavefunction collapse in Verdant’s system and the ripple effects across the omniverse compelled Henri to play the obsequious savior.

His hair matted and peppered with twistles and dorty from his near-fatal floodslide to the Well, Henri bowed low and intoned with perfect maiden-court civility. “Al-el Szafhi, High Chanter of the Verdant Mistery, I name you.”

In response, Al-el Szafhi raised and cupped her palms. “Henri Tattersol, you come on an errand of no consequence. Nevertheless, we welcome your irrelevance.”

She swept her hands down either side of her tightly curled locks causing the air around her head to shimmer. An aura-field spread out from her. The oppressive moisture in the air around them vaporized in a steamy whirlwind that lifted in leaden sky — fodder for the next Cloudfall.

“Your worship knows my mission. Wave function collapse is inevitable.”

“Wafuco is the Inevitable. Why should it be otherwise?”

“Because it is not inevitable otherwhere,” Henri offered.

Al-el Szafhi, High Chanter of the Verdant Mistery faced Henri at the verge of the Well. The massive whirlpool the maidens of the MIstery believed to be Verdant’s mother, giving birth and rebirth to everything. “To save us from Wafuco, this is your wish, Henri Tattersol?”

“It is. A wave function collapse would do the omniverse great harm.”

“Is that all?”

“It is everything.”

Al-el Szafhi rejoiced. “Then wave goodbye, Henri Tattersol! The mother of everything wishes you…her Well.” And she zapped Henri who fell into the swirling Misteries below.