When ZarJazz came to the coast without stopping he moved across the water, his followers stepping and filling the surface of the sea, the waves died and the sea held them up. The fish which would have feasted hid unmoving in the deeps, and the dark mass of life crossed slowly over their domain.
When all the insects assembled from every part of the earth, they stood an undulating tapestry of colours a hundred miles across. And in an instant all the life that had previously teemed so thoroughly amongst the earth, within every building, among every plant, writhing deep within the earth or in the air, were gone. And the earth was quiet.
At first the spinning of the earth went on unchanged, the mammals and birds and the rest of life did not notice the change. Like tinnitus suddenly turned off all was peaceful, but soon the loss of countless billions of lives seeped into them. The remnants of the earth began to realise not that they had gained by the removal of an unwanted annoyance, but that they in fact had been left behind. The insects were not the ostentatious nuisance, the lower life there only to bemuse with its insignificance and unknowable countenance. They were in fact the webbing through which all other life had adapted around, their works unnoticed. The cockroaches in the kitchen, the spider in the bath were not there to annoy or scare, they had just been there working. Like the cleaner caught with his arms in the toilet bowl by the early office worker, the insects that humans saw had just overstayed to finish up. They were the knitters of the reality that all other life unthinkingly accepted; they had coursed through every part of the earth, binding it together. And now they were gone and the fabric would come apart. At first the air became putrid, the microbes that had been kept a bay had free reign, and the waste just would not disappear, the plants died and the buildings crumbled. The earth still turned but with every revolution, the sun shone on a lesser world. The remaining humans in their new deserts tried to summon forth a call to ZarJazz to bring back life to them. Not knowing the name of power, but somehow tapping into the unifying thought that was resounding through the cosmos, they picked up the sound zzzzzzzzzzzzzz. They stood where they were, intoning on the sound. But ZarJazz listening now to the singing of every life in every age throughout the universe, did not hear the sound of this tiny conglomeration of life as even a whisper.
The insects for their part, in their untold billions spread out amongst the vastness of space each one, no longer as a human perceived mindless part of a collective brain but as individuals, as gods with each one a galaxy of its own to nurse.
As the earth quietly spun on, infinitesimally small and empty, the rest of the universe moved with a new unity, galaxies which had moved untended changed course, new stars and new life was born to fill the void and the name of ZarJazz the Magnificent, the unifier, was spoken and written large across the heavens.
As each new life bloomed across the countless planets and the invisible strands that bind all existence together were re-knitted ZarJazz smiled. But within him there was still a part that was Edgar. For Edgar had lived within him, and although there was and would always be ZarJazz, so was there now an eternal Edgar.
And so ZarJazz turned to look again upon the earth. He saw the planet stripped, he saw the loss written on the land and seas, saw the remnants of life huddled together. He saw the face of a human that he at once knew. And he came to them again, his eyes yellow like the sun and his tongue stuck firmly in his cheek. And he spoke to them,” I am god, not your god, but god. Look through me and be as the gods you are. Raise yourselves and live wisely. Those that can see may stand beside me, and take your place in the dance of light that spins forever with and against the dark.”
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