6. Current State

Gulvi gave up, out of luck. And out of ideas. The dolphin had no issue racing through any body of water, but as soon as he approached the invisible wall on this side—

The water current picked up again, smashing into him and creating a cloak of bubbles. It forced him back the way he came. And he knew that the faster he swam, the stronger the current would be.

What was out there? What was on the other side of the ocean that his family were not allowed to see? The thought just made him even more eager to see it. He had claimed this ocean as his throne and named it the Dolphin Pass, but he could really only use a tiny fraction of it before the boundary stopped him.

Alas, the dolphin could not trick the invisible wall. It would always find a way to push him back where he belonged.

He fell still and let the current push him back. Along the way, he noticed a large collection of blue-purple boulders. They seemed a bit too smooth and too large to be natural. He decided to ask Darus if he’d been trying to invent a ball sport to be played underwater again.

As he resurfaced, footsteps splashed through the shallow water nearby. Gulvi could recognize all his siblings just by splashing alone—and this was Cosmo, a great bird and God of Air and Space.

He wasn’t having much success either.

He kept launching himself from higher and higher objects, flapping his great wings at a speed that blurred them to Gulvi’s eyes. And he could fly fast, yes, and he could reach high, but he could not get over the invisible wall. Perhaps it was also an infinite wall.

And in the end, even against a bird, gravity would always win. Cosmo’s wings would tire and he’d be forced to fall back down to the earth. He was so tired of trying to pass the invisible wall that he’d chosen to rest his wings and crash land in the soft sea.

Gulvi rested his fins too and let the water current bring him to his brother.

When they left, they disagreed with the others about how to overcome the wall. Gulvi was certain there had to be a gap somewhere on the wide ocean. Cosmo scoffed when they questioned his ability to fly over it. They made a fuss, called Ardex an ugly sour cat, and left without a word, many moon cycles ago. Now they longed to return, with slight shame drooping from their faces, and get new ideas from their siblings.

“Sometimes, I think,” Cosmo said, his gaze distant. “If nature wants it to be that way, why don’t we just let it? Stop struggling against it. If everything is supposed to fall to the floor, why do I keep trying to fly?”

“Nature doesn’t want anything, silly,” chattered Gulvi. “It just is. It’s those who can manipulate energy that can think about wanting. I just, tsh tsh tsh, go with the flow.”

Yes, that’s true. Gulvi had said something smart, he told himself. The world was whatever it was. It would always return to staying the same and doing nothing, because that’s how it all started. You had to apply energy to create change.

He was quite proud of that, as he was pretty new to saying smart things. With the disappearance of Hanah ever since they landed here, he was technically the youngest of them all. A toddler on the time scale of gods. A smart toddler at—

Something stirred in the water. He wasn’t used to bacteria doing this much, and when he looked, his suspicion was confirmed: these were no bacteria. Long blobs in different colors radiated from a boulder. They were thick and round at one end, but pointy and thin at the other, like Cosmo’s beak.

Or … arrows?

Unease crept through his fins. These creatures did not interact with the water. They did not create waves, nor bubbles, nor push things aside. As if they weren’t just slightly see-through but also slightly pass-through, like a ghost.

The water current grew in power again, removing Gulvi and Cosmo from the beach.

“Look!” Cosmo said, following the oblong creatures with his sharp eyes. “They align themselves with the current. Do you think these are some kind of magical fish? Creating the currents?”

Indeed. Their pointy end pointed exactly in the direction of water flow. And when the water changed, they’d swivel and point in the right direction again. Wherever the current was strongest, the creatures had the brightest colors and were least transparent.

Or was it the other way around?

“No. They don’t create the waves. They show them; they are them?”

Both of them dove into the water to catch a few of these arrowheads. This was a mistake. Their jump stirred the water and sent waves away from them, which the arrowheads promptly displayed.

Then Gulvi noticed a few that stayed nearby. They didn’t align with the water, no, they sprung out of a carpet of bacteria. A moving carpet. And as expected, the arrowheads aligned themselves with the direction in which they moved. As if predicting where it was going to go next.

“Oh, oh, can I name them?” Gulvi chattered. Indeed, when nothing happened for millions of years, godchildren were bound to develop an obsession with giving any discovery a fun name. “I can give smart-sounding names too, just like you. I call these … Sizzlefish. No, no, that’s not good enough. And they’re not just in the water. I call them … Enyrgias.”

“Never mind the name!” said Cosmo. “Why didn’t we see them before?”

“Why would we?” replied Gulvi while chasing them. “The laws of the universe have always been the same, always there. But we’re only discovering many of them now, aren’t we?”

Cosmo’s feathers scratched his chin. “What do they mean? Where do they come from? No, little brother, don’t touch them!”

Gulvi had already tried to hug a group of them, but he was right: they were like ghosts. Untouchable. Maybe not even there at all.

“Dear Enyrgias,” said Cosmo. “What are you? Can you talk? Could you please use your strength to break the invisible wall?”

No response. They didn’t really expect one. The Enyrgias simply showed the movement of water and bacteria, and when that died down, they vanished too.

No, they didn’t vanish. They just moved.

Gulvi followed the strongest current of them all. It was easy to find: it had the most and brightest Enyrgias.

That powerful wave hit one of the boulders. This completely stilled the water; but now the boulder flew through the water, almost crushing them. All the Enyrgias from before had jumped ship: they now circled the boulder and displayed how that object was moving.

Once the boulder reached the surface it shot into the air.

Gravity slowed it down quickly. But as before, the Enyrgias didn’t disappear. Even as the boulder hung in the air, still, ready to fall down, it was surrounded by the same number of creatures as before. As if the boulder had saved up energy by slowing down in the air, and would unleash it soon by falling back down.

Cosmo was the better mathematician of the two. After seeing this happen several times, he confirmed.

“They always stay the same. They may jump to different objects, or change, or convert from water to air. But the number of them, at least in our close vicinity, stays the same.”

“It’s like Feria and Darus said,” Gulvi stated, his excitement slipping away. “All the energy there’ll ever be has already been created. Everyone is just using it and then giving it back in a different form. The current state of the universe … is the only state of the universe.”

Yes! Another smart quote! Bella should start writing these down. Where was she anyway?

“But that doesn’t mean,” said Cosmo, “we can’t try and grab a larger slice of energy before having to give it back.”

Feria ran onto their beach. She told of an ambitious plan that needed their help. A last attempt to save Bella, who had almost disintegrated.