01 – Primordium

"But why a survival game?"

Murumuru had proposed all sorts of ideas. "A god has to be creative," she had said. "So why not have a manga or fanfiction writing contest?" Deus responded that creativity is nothing without purpose, and men waste too much time on frivolous things.

"A god has to be skillful," she proposed. "So why not elevate the greatest chess player in the world?" Deus responded that, in all due respect, playing chess is nothing like ruling over all of time and space.

"A god has to be smart, so why not collect all the best minds and give them tests on all the important subjects?" Deus' response was that the academic elite rarely are the sort of pragmatic doers that this sort of responsibility demands.

Perhaps, even, there could a popular vote in the world below, which would empower the people below to better listen to their god. Deus always had something of a bad public image. Things like this did not seem to help it, either—which is why Murumuru felt she was completely justified in asking whether there was not a better route, and why she felt indignant when Deus laughed at her.

"A survival game is the only logical choice," Deus ex Machina bellowed forth, gesturing with his hand. "For all the concerns you've brought up to me. A god must be creative, so he can create; a god must be skillful, so he can remain absolute, and a god must be smart, or else he will create something beyond his bounds. But each of these skills is not enough. There's a missing piece."

Murumuru kept pacing back and forth, walking on the air. Her master hovered in his breaking shell, observing the world from the Cathedral of Causality. He took his eyes from the events unfolding and rested them on his tiny devil servant.

Deus folded his hands together and, with a bowed head, explained, "I have maintained this world with consistent balance, in accordance with the vision I have had since Primordium. Violence and death are not arbitrary—they are my solution to some of the problems any future god would face. If I am to decide a successor, then, I will respect the principle of survival."

Murmuru stopped her pacing and, slowly, rotated so that she floated upside down in front of Deus. She ascended so her eyes were on level with Deus'. Her hair dangled down, but her clothes remained unaffected by gravity. She picked and chose how much of her she wanted bound by these laws.

"This is not going to win you many fans," she said. While upside down, she picked her nose idly. "But I know I'm not going to be able to change your mind."

Deus shook his head. "No, you will not," he stated. "In fact, the time has finally arrived for the Future Diaries to be distributed. I have given you glimpses and names already, as well as the according Diary they shall receive." He lifted his hand and called forth a portal between himself and Murumuru. "Pass through this rift, and seek out the Diaries. When you touch the Diary, you will activate its power and be teleported to the new user. When you are finished, then we can speak about whether there was a better way to decide this."

Murmuru looked into the portal: it was a swirling array of colors, from which sparks of energy were shooting forth, grasping at random molecules in the air. She eyed it and then proceeded around it, to close in on the massive Deus. This was Deus—her companion endlessly, who after all the years, still could not appreciate the importance of consensus in a relationship, who still felt he wore the eternal pants in every situation.

"I want to know what I'm getting into before I get thrown in like this!" Murumuru protested, poking her finger in the air, in his direction. "This doesn't feel right! I still don't like this, not one bit! What if none of these people you have picked are any good! Maybe someone bad will just get lucky, and—"

Deus's arm reached out and smacked Murumuru into the portal. With the forceful shove, the god shouted, "Go!" She went on, then, through this vortex that bridged one point of space-time to another, which bridged the mortal world to a dark realm, lit only by the isolated presences of the Diaries.

The objects went around in a wide circle, gently against the black abyss. Most of them were cell phones, but a few other objects were there as well: a scroll, a coloring book, a laptop, a camera, and a voice recorder. She looked at them for a while: boooring. However, nothing else interesting presented itself—the portal back to where Deus was nowhere to be seen.

Just as it looked like she was about to touch one of the cell phones, she caught something else in the darkness, outside the circle of Diaries. Murumuru curiously approached it, only to find that it was a crisp yen banknote. She looked tentatively to the left, then to the right; of course, she found no objectors to her claiming it.

When Murumuru stooped down to pick it up, however, it suddenly jerked back. She concluded that it must have been a draft. She tried picking it up again, and once more it jumped back—a bad draft. Murumuru scratched her head and tried again. She went running after the banknote, only for it to skip away from her.

Murumuru followed the banknote all the way through a portal out of the darkness—and she only realized that she had done so, when she found herself stumbling over some sort of boxes on the floor. In her view now was a light source that previously was nowhere to be found: a square box of white fuzzy light, from which a "shhhh" sound was coming.

It was the only light present, but it gave her a good view of her surroundings still: it sat in between a wooden chair and a disorganized bed with white bed spread. Just behind Murumuru was the portal, which remained open behind her, and a tea kettle. Behind the television monitor was a window's curtain. A remote sat in front of the television set, on a little wooden stand.

She walked up close to the TV, so she could examine the remote. It looked like a standard remote, only that the button for channel one was missing, and it looked like the button for channel two had been swapped out for one of a different color, from an entirely different remote.

Murumuru looked back at the portal: sure, Deus was dying, but he could hold on just a little longer. Making him wait and have some patience might teach him a lesson, she figured, although she also concluded she needed no excuse to watch TV. Her finger touched the channel 2 button.

"Welcome, traveler."

Murumur jumped up with a start. In the darkness of the room, in hiding, someone had addressed her. She had not seen anyone else enter the room since she had found it—but she also saw no evidence that anyone had been hiding here, either.

"Do not be alarmed. I would not think of harming you."

Murumuru still stood alert.

"I merely want to explain to you what you're about to watch. You see, this is no ordinary TV. It tells the future… Or rather, possible futures."

Murumuru looked back towards the fuzzy screen.

"Each button corresponds to a certain Diary, a certain conception of the world as it could be. We cannot be sure how accurate these representations are, but, it's certainly something interesting to watch."

Murumuru nodded. This certainly was interesting. Even if some creep would be in the room with her the whole time, she could not pass this opportunity up. For this time, she had held her finger on the button, but now she pressed it in, and the TV switched to channel 2.