Dead Matter

“There is only one true God,” said the Exoform, addressing the prisoners.

“You gonna tell us it’s you?” shouted a man with more courage and less sense than I.

“No,” said the Exoform. “The only God is Entropy.” And then it vaporized the man. Slowly.

I dared not turn away, but I unfocused my eyes and saw only a blurry red mist that swelled and condensed until at last it was over. There was nothing I could do to muffle the screams.

The Exoform looked human. It had a human body, and a human voice. But it was only a convenience. It was anything but human.

The Exoforms said they came from another plane, somewhere transdimensional. I’ve heard no suitable reason to doubt it.

They said it’s a universe very different from this one. Idyllic. A paradise of wonder and plenty. A place we could not comprehend due to the differences in its fundamental nature, in the fabric from which it is made.

And here, the domain of Sol, is just a small spec within, but a sacred one. A garden, or a preserve, dedicated to their God.

We’re an aberration. We weren’t supposed to be here. Weren’t supposed to happen. We defile the garden and cast doubt on their entire system of beliefs with our very existence.

So they have come to bring our existence to a conclusion.

“When you looked out among the stars and beyond, did you not recognize that all was dead matter? Did the numbers not suggest this was as it should be? As it was intended? Matter is not meant to live. To give life to matter is a curse, and more than a curse, a primordial evil. You organize and replicate and consume, all in defiance of Entropy. In defiance of God, whose will is evident here, and yet you ignore and resist and provoke. Who among you is ready to be free of your blasphemous burden?”

“I am,” I said. My burden was having to listen to this sermon.

“A convert,” it said, the words oozing from its uncanny throat. “Come, be baptized and free the evil bound in your very molecular structure.”

My confinements released, and I approached the Exoform before us.

“I cannot say you will know some other life beyond, for the soul is lie, but what I can offer in it’s place is of far greater—”

I lunged. Tackled it to the ground. Grasped its hair in one hand and an ear in the other and hammered its head against the ground, and when it grabbed my wrists I dove in and bit out its throat like a wild dog.

Then it was still. I sent the Exoform back to its God.

I stood, slowly, and wiped my hands, and spit, and heaved. I turned to free the other prisoners. But a new body was waiting silently behind me.

“You can end my body, but you cannot end me, for I am not truly here,” it said. “The same cannot be said for you.”