Growing Pains

Elorae stared into the rift.

Something was not right.

It seemed to be... belching?

Or whatever the equivalent was for rips in the canvas of reality.

Something was definitely off.

At least there was only one Elorae freaking out in the small beige workshop. The lensing had stopped, so Kavlok hadn't completely fucked up. Elorae still couldn't tell what was going on in there. Understanding the material realm was for lesser entities like Kavlok. They got their hands mucky with all of that human stuff. And somehow they were still terribly uninformed.

Elorae cursed as she sank her head. Everything was spiraling. Vaelith was asking her about the seed of doubt, Kavlok was tinkering with an entirely new timeline, and here she was sitting in front of a rift in the ether that had just belched out a jet of light and energy. It had been thoroughly terrifying. And to make matters worse it seemed the rift was only growing.

Elorae shook her head. As if summoned by her disappointment a pop sounded through the workshop as Kavlok appeared at her side, this time wearing the body of a pudgy grey-haired man, and looking just as sad as ever.

"There seems to be a problem." He said, twiddling his thumbs as Elorae went back to staring into the tear in the ether.

"I can see that." She said.

"What? No I don't mean, well... that. But it may be connected. No, I meant with the timeline of this new reality."

Elorae shook her head once more this time rubbing her eyes.

"What exactly do you mean? Did you put those changes into effect?"

"Yes!" Kavlok said in a whinging voice that piped with excitement before dying down again. "Well, I did. And the changes worked. That seems to be the problem now, the changes, well they aren't stopping."

"What do you mean?"

"Well instead of getting tangled with the old reality, this new universe seems to be veering."

"Veering?"

"It keeps shifting. Changes are happening that I didn't try to make. Big changes. Whole societies are shifting."

Elorae was already taking out her ethereal ****.

"Kavlok..." She said with a sigh unstopping the bottle.

"I didn't make them! The lensing stopped! See! It's not my fault. There's something else, something tugging on that reality." He said sitting down as far away from Elorae as he could, sweat beading on his head.

Elorae looked at him, and felt a moment of pity. He was the only one in the whole ether who had been trying to help her. Maybe she shouldn't be so antagonistic. It wasn't Kavlok's fault he was from the sublayers of the ether. He was a cosmic bureaucrat who had stumbled into the mess she had made. He was so far out of his depth. But so was she. She had no idea how this 'world' that these 'humans' lived in worked. Sure she had a body that looked like theirs, but they had strange things like colors, electric guitars, and frozen yogurt.

Or so she had heard. She didn't really know what a yogurt was, and she certainly didn't want to know what happened to one when it was frozen.

So she let out another groan, rummaged through a draw until she found a set of goggles with a hundred different lenses, the kind that looked at home at a watchmakers shop or a steam-punk convention.

Placing them on her head didn't seem to ruffle her hair, which wasn't made out of those pesky molecules that humans had, she stared into the void and hoped it wasn't in the mood to stare back. She hoped she would find answers.

The problem was, that she did.

"I apologize Kavlok." She said, the words not tumbling out of her mouth so much as awkwardly shuffling. "It seems that this one is my problem."

"What?" Kavlok said, surprised to hear this new twist.

"I was working on... well I was working on a seed of doubt. When the lensing started, something happened to it, it sort of became a void of nothingness. I didn't pay it any heed, I thought it would just sort itself out. That did not happen. It seems that the idea I dropped into here has grown, and now the two are linked. On a fundamental level. Now they are pulling toward each other." Elorae said, and as she spoke she had been pulling open drawers and cabinets until she found the void that was shaped like the seed of doubt.

"That would explain the wild trajectory. Can we destroy it? Sever the link?" Kavlok said.

"It's quite hard to destroy doubt, but now that doubt has been infused with nothingness? Do you know how hard it is to destroy nothing?" she said.

"No?"

"Well, it's impossible. This seed will keep pulling on the idea, and since it's here well... that's bad. They can't be unlinked, and if my idea continues to grow and evolve? Right now the power of the ether is strong enough that it's just the human reality hurtling towards us, but if the pull from the idea grows the ether might start to full the pull itself. As long as it's here it's a danger to us. Hell, we might not have time to experience that pull. We might get swallowed up, the rift won't stop growing as long as we don't do something."

"So why not just dump it in the rift?"

Elorae scoffed and looked at Kavlok, a witty retort at the ready.

But then her look of smug indignation vanished. Her face screwed up as she thought about what Kavlok said.

"Well the seed isn't really a seed anymore. It's not even nothing, not really. It's been influenced by this connection. It's becoming more like the idea, powerful, it will seek out a human host. It will be able to remold the humans reality. It will be... very powerful. One human having that-" Elorae started.

"Any worse than a human having the idea that _you _made?" Kavlok said.

Elorae glared at him. But he wasn't wrong.

"No. Probably not."

"Plus if the humans can remold their reality, they can be the ones to get it back on track! This is great! Instead of wild reality shifts as their timeline careens off course, any changes will be controlled."

"As controlled as my idea is?"

"That's more control than they currently have, which is none." Kavlok said, and with a bit of sass too. Elorae hadn't expected that. Kavlok was on to something.

"Maybe... after all the Idea I created is an agent of surety, doubt might actually balance it."

"Sure! And if it doesn't?"

Elorae, took off her goggles, as she cradled the former seed of doubt and walked toward the rift.

"One disaster at a time." She said, and hurled it into the rift that was fraying the edges of the ether.

It was the humans problem now. How much could they fuck it up?