The Author (short story)

This story is kind of a metaphor for God as a creator. c:
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Once there was an amazing author with a big story to write. He developed far more characters than an average memory genius can keep track of. He carefully set each profile aside, anticipating the day he would introduce it to the intricate and enormous world of his story that literally spanned galaxies. The ideas were abounding, never ending.

But the Author decided to start with just two characters. Oh, he loved characters. He had a way of breathing life into them, so that they laughed and danced; it gave him great joy just to watch them and to talk with them and to guide their lives according to his outline. They were his most precious creation, and he loved them like his own children.

He got quite a few assistants to help him with the execution of it all—a few extra hands. He often sent them into the story to interact with it directly. One of his best helpers thought it was a pretty great story. In fact, it could be better if a few things were changed. The Helper started to believe that he could take on a lot more of the job than the Author was allotting him. He rallied a few of the other assistants, organizing a protest.

The Author fired him. This was not the Helper’s story. The Ex-helper became bitter. He wrote himself into the story without permission, determined to have a say in it anyhow, lying about the Author. Using a clever disguise, he tricked the first two characters into rebellion. They did not realize that in allowing any but the Author to guide them, they changed the fate of every other character to come.

The masterpiece was ruined. Meticulous sketches and pages and pages of notes were singed, blotted with ink, and soaked in water, tossed to the ground.

The Author mourned. But he would not give up his greatest work.

The story went on beneath the ink, and the characters were in pain. The original plans were all still in the Author’s head, unbroken and beautiful. He would create them again, but even better! And this time he would make them that much more real. Settings were replaceable.

Characters were not.

He had given a bit of himself to bring each character to life. He would not leave them broken. He turned through the pages of the original book, though every rip and stain caused him unspeakable pain. He spoke to the characters; he showed them again the way to go. But they had all become rebels, and few would allow themselves to hear him. They even bathed in and ate the inkspills, so used to the common stain. Couldn’t they see that it was poison?

According to the plan, the characters of this world would have died in the story, only to become alive in the Author’s world. But the ink bound them to the paper, and eventually this soiled book would have to be burned with all the remains of ruin.

To the characters who would listen, the Author told the truth. He promised that he would rescue them, each one of them, if they would only let him. But he could not put them in his new book with their stains. He could remake them exactly as they should have been, but they must allow him to do it and work with him, for in giving them life he had given them wills of their own.

The Author’s son saw his pain. He knew that the ink was so engrained in the lives of the characters that the only way to remove it was from below the stains. He offered to do it himself. His father could do it—could send him into the story. So the Author did.

The Son walked amongst the characters, telling them the truth, showing them the way they were meant to be, and many of them believed him. But many could not see past the ink in their eyes, and they shunned him for his strangeness. He could not be the Author’s son, bringing the Author’s messages! Nobody had heard from the Author for years!

The Ex-helper, lurking in the shadows, reveled in his success. If the rebels would not give up the rebellion (in fact, they had started to believe they were not really rebels), then the devastation was permanent, and all would be lost in the burning. If only he could manage to get a blot of ink on the Author’s Son, now that would be a crippling blow; the Son would be doomed as well.

But the Son knew of the Ex-helper’s tricks and would not fall for them. The best that the Ex-helper could do was to manipulate some of the rebels into killing him. At least to get his good influence back out of the story!

But there was something that the Ex-helper had overlooked. For a character who had never been stained to die—this would loosen the bond of the ink. All the ruined characters would be given a chance to escape, a lifeline to hold to as they slipped from beneath the blots. This had been forgotten, because there were no longer any worthy characters.

So the rebels killed the Author’s Son.

The jig was up. Back in his world, the Son had a knife to the throat of the Ex-helper, and he was bound to the doomed book. The Ex-helper feebly whispered into its pages that the Son had failed and all was lost; but the Son, now able to move freely into the book and out of it, spoke the truth. He would never let the hope die. And each character who was willing to discard the loosened ink, the Author and his Son polished clean, placing them safe in the new book, aptly named the Book of Life, for in it was every character who could truly live even after leaving the story. When they died, they would be free of the stains, for no longer was the ink soaked into the fibers of their beings. Alive in the Author’s world, they could truly meet with him in the new world the Author constructed, far from any ruthless ink or rebellion. And once the long, meticulous, love-driven task of restoration was completed, once everything that could and would be saved was, everything left of the doomed book would be thrown into the fire with the one who made it so.

The new story would be better. The new story would be bigger. The new story, would, heart wrenchingly, be many characters short, but not because of any lack of attention on the Author’s part. Those who wrapped themselves in their stains chose doom; those who chose the Author chose life.

And what a life it would be.