The Homunculus King

What threat is there to life, to human life? Well, every species must have its predators, but since humans started doing strange things that had never been done on earth, like writing words on cave walls and fashioning garments from grass and utensils from stone, the beasts that once hunted us from the cover of bushes realised slowly that it was time to find new prey. After all, there were still plenty of little animals like us who couldn’t yet comprehend what a weapon was, or how to make one from stone, or wood, or whatever else. The void of having no natural predators was filled by humans swiftly, with all kinds of phantoms, some big and some small but all of them utterly tricky. We all know, after all, how reluctant humans are to except absence, and how they must fill every empty space with something. Those were the new species, the homunculi, our invisible, unknown children who hid in dark nights and behind trap doors, and perhaps in the caves and forests far away from our cities. On some nights, like this one, they demanded to be seen and heard.

Andrei drove through the darkness, filling his mind with heavy and nervous thoughts lest tiredness creep in. A row of trees lined the left side of the country road, illuminated one by one by his headlights. The moon was nothing more than a vague suggestion under the blanket of fog and cloud, and there was not a single star in sight. Andrei grew worried. He remembered all the nights he had spent as a child, wondering what would happen if the sun never rose again, scaring himself so much that he wouldn’t be able to sleep, writhing in fear until he could no longer fight his exhaustion. In his child brain, there seemed to be no possible crueller and more terrible fate.

‘What a silly thought. Who could’ve put such an idea in my head?’, he wondered.

Just then, a tree ahead of him seemed to be shaken by a fearsome force. Andrei held his breath.

‘The only thing more awful than the sun never rising again’, he thought to himself, already well aware of what was once again after him. Mechanically, he made a perfect u-turn and drove back in the direction of where he came as fast as the speed limit allowed. He kept his eyes locked on the rearview mirror, and to his horror, the phantom he was escaping had left the tree and was gaining on him rapidly with every flap of its huge wings. 

‘Everything is going to plan’, he reassured himself, his body still seized with fear.

The monster overtook his car and hovered for a while before locking its eyes on Andrei through the windshield and landing on his hood with the force of a boulder, digging its claws into the metal. That is when Andrei executed the next part of his plan, slamming his brakes down so abruptly that the creature lost its balance and collided with his windshield. The glass was cracked, but thankfully not broken, and Andrei sprinted out of his car, rope in hand, to tie the creature up in the brief period that it was down.

‘Hey! Stop it!’ The creature protested in a grating, harsh voice.

‘Oh, you can speak! That’ll actually make this easier.’ Andrei’s voice shook as he hauled the heavy bird into the front passenger seat of his car, strapping it in and tying more rope around the bird and the seat for good measure. The thing screamed in a horrible shrill the whole time. Andrei returned to the driver's seat and took in what he had captured, his heartbeat racing. The thing had the body of a big white bird, like a seagull but bigger and unexpectedly heavy. Its face was that of an aged man with deep wrinkles, almost nonexistent teeth, and an unpleasant expression. It ceased screaming, seemingly running out of breath, breathing heavily and loudly like an old smoker. Suddenly, it spoke:

‘I’m almost impressed that a coward like you pulled that off. You’ll probably never do anything this impressive again. And you’re only twenty! God, how many years of boredom await you now after that stunt. If I were you I’d get so bored, I’d lose the will!’

Andrei was taken aback by his prisoner’s attitude.

‘Hey! You’re just upset that I caught you, you old fool! Now, tell me why you’ve been following me around!’

The monster had indeed been following Andrei for many years. The monster looked bewildered, bursting out in wild laughter.

‘What? What are you laughing about? Tell me!’

‘Andrei, do you think I’d follow you round out of choice? You think there’s nothing I’d prefer to do?’ The beast cackled. 

‘Well then, who put you up to this?’

‘You did Andrei. I’ll follow you around as long as you are Andrei.’

Andrei was stunned.

‘What? Is there really no way I can get rid of you?’

The monster became quiet and pensive.

‘Tell me! I thought you said you were tired of following me around, did you not?’

‘Well yes, maybe there is one way. It might not work-’

‘But there’s a chance?’

‘Only if you can understand what lies ahead.’

‘And what might that be?’

‘I’ll show you. Drive, and I’ll tell you which way to go.’

Andrei looked forward at the cracked windshield, looming like a huge spider web across the night sky.

‘You’re a monster. How do I know you’re not tricking me?’

‘You don’t. You either do what I tell you now or I’ll follow you for the rest of your life, and I’ll make sure to pester you even more for capturing me as you just have!’

Andrei weighed his options; either he would let the bird go and nothing would change, and all his efforts would’ve been for nothing, or something new would unfold in his boring, old, long detested life.

‘Fine. Navigate me.’

The monster smiled.

-

They’d been driving for who knows how long, and the yellow, foggy moon had not moved even an inch, like a soldier who never abandoned his post. 

‘Now, go left.’, muttered the bird.

‘But there’s no road!’

‘Just go! There’s a road, you just can’t see it yet.’ The creature scoffed at Andrei’s cluelessness.

Unsure what other choice he had, Andrei swerved the car to the left, and indeed a road slowly unfolded from darkness where there was no road before. His mouth gaped open in awe.

‘Did you make that appear?’

‘Me?’ The creature cackled again, in its usual, grating cadence. Andrei thought about how he couldn’t wait to be rid of the thing. ‘Well, you have to stop the car now. We have to walk from here.’

Andrei obeyed, stepping out of the car and going to the other side to free his prisoner.

‘Hold still.’ The creature was docile, for once. ‘There you go.’

Flying up into the air, the bird stretched out its wings incredibly, unnaturally widely, gliding soundlessly through the cold air before coming back down. For the first time, Andrei thought his tormenter was rather graceful, as long as you didn’t look at its ugly face. The monster flew back down and hovered by Andrei, both of them now advancing forward on foot. Andrei now noticed, to his displeasure, that the moon had disappeared. Regardless of his anxiety, he kept walking, his footsteps silent in the void. 

‘Ah!’ The bird screeched, and flew away into nothingness.

‘Hey! Come back!’ Andrei shouted after it, but dared not to step away from the road. He then realised what had startled his companion: A faint light was emerging straight ahead. Andrei moved swiftly to the side of the road, assuming it was a car coming at them, but the light did not advance nor did it get further away. Hesitantly, he walked on and on along the edge of the road. The light rapidly became brighter and brighter, illuminating all that was around. A scene emerged as he continued  to walk, a scene of sea green grass and trees with bark like charcoal, leafless. The earth curled around on itself and through the sky, forming a tunnel, where more trees hung upside down overhead. However, unlike most tunnels, it was not dark, but increasingly illuminated by the golden sun that hovered at the far end, where the earth opened up to the sky. Andrei could not believe his eyes, his limbs becoming stiff with fear and awe as he exerted himself to carry on walking. A voice bellowed from the far end of the tunnel, a voice that sounded curiously similar to Andrei’s own.

‘Keep walking!’

‘Hey? Who is that? Where are you?’ Andrei shouted, and immediately felt dizzy and exhausted. He sat down and breathed deeply. The air smelled sweet, like brown sugar, and the grass was velvety and warm, as if a great furnace burned under it.

‘Keep walking and you will find your soul, and it's very origin. Here lies the birthplace, young man!’ Bellowed the voice again. 

Andrei squinted, deep in thought, sceptical.

‘Do you know anything about the bird?’

‘The bird?’ The voice seemed surprised. ‘Why, yes, of course! And many more things, many more secrets. Come and see for yourself, Andrei.’

‘Hm.’ Andrei got back up on his feet, energised by the warm earth. He spotted a cave in the wall of the tunnel, slightly ahead to his right. Its black entrance stuck out like a sore thumb, the only blemish in the picturesque garden, the only hole in the perfect blanket of grass. ‘Why should I believe you? I’ll go where I want.’ He advanced towards the cave.

‘No! Do not go there! In there there are savages who know nothing! Only with me will you find wisdom!’

‘I don’t know many things myself. I’ll get on better with them than with you!’

‘No! Please! You don’t know what you’re doing!’ 

How funny it was to hear such an all-powerful voice in such a panic! Andrei made nothing of it, and entered the huge opening in the earth. 

-

After some more walking through damp, twisty corridors, the cave opened up into a huge, grand space, like how the hallway of a castle would open up into a ballroom. In the empty space there hovered a huge, glowing form; a cluster of spheres with rings orbiting around it, and hundreds of tiny workers modifying the design with hammers and chisels and all sorts of tools. Flashes of all sorts of colours Andrei had never seen glimmered around the chamber, some flying like comets and others floating upwards like smoke. Andrei approached one of the workers, a particularly studious looking creature with a furrowed brow.

‘Excuse me, what are you building?’

The creature did not even look up.

‘Begone. Must work.’

‘It kind of looks like an atom.’

All the creatures in the chamber stopped working and locked their eyes on Andrei.

‘An atom?’ The studious creature’s mouth gaped open. ‘Who told you? How do you know?’

‘Take him to the king!’ shouted another creature from the other side of the chamber.

‘Take him! Take him to the King!’, echoed many others, shaking their small fists in the air. Before Andrei knew it, the studious creature tied a rope, produced from who knows where, around his wrists and led him past the atom, through the chamber, and into another corridor.

‘Back to work, all of you!’ He shouted at them all as they left. Andrei was calm and collected, positive that these creatures and their king would not hurt him despite their rage, just as he had not hurt his dear prisoner earlier, and that there had to exist a road leading out of everything.

They led him through, unsurprisingly, more corridors, and he caught glimpses of more chambers along the way. In some chambers the creatures were fashioning the tools the creatures in the atom room had been using, in others they were fashioning simple clothing. It was all a very well organised operation, with thousands of workers running through the tunnels as if following the strictest of schedules. 

‘What will you build after you finish the atom?’ Andrei asked, bored of the long commute.

‘Who knows, probably science. Isn’t that natural?’

‘And after science?’

‘Well, we don’t know yet. Whatever the king decides, once the time comes!’

Andrei imagined the tiny king in his head as a comical little being with a long beard and oversized crown that made his neck ache. Perhaps the neck ache irked him so that he forgot atoms already existed, and claimed them as his own invention. Perhaps there was some other explanation.

‘Do you know anything about the bird with the human face?’

‘With the human face? What does that look like?’

‘Like mine, only his is different, older and more wrinkly.’

The creature looked truly confused, and almost embarrassed for Andrei.

‘I can’t imagine anyone else looking like you. Anyways, enough chat, prisoner! You’ll be rotting in the king’s dungeon soon enough!’

After not much longer, they entered an especially large chamber, and Andrei noticed an astronomically large pair of greyish blue feet. He laughed to himself.

‘Sire! We have an intruder! He slandered your glorious atom, sire!

Andrei held his breath. He slowly leaned his head back, and beheld a towering body stretching upwards from the feet. There was the king, tall as a castle, sitting on a huge throne carved from the very walls of the cave. 

‘You slander my atom, do you? Tell me, what do you have to say about it?’ The king spoke, in a booming voice. Andrei collected himself, and spoke loudly and confidently.

‘I do not slander it sire, I simply stated that atoms already exist. Many of them in fact.’

‘Not in this cave, they don’t! Everything here exists only if I will it to.’

‘I can show you that other atoms already exist in this cave, all over it in fact. You are a man of science, I hear, and so am I. Let us conduct an experiment, as scientists do.’

There were gasps and chatter all over the crowded throne room. The king stared at Andrei with a rage in his grey eyes.

‘You’re right, I am indeed a man of science. Set the prisoner free and let him show us these so-called other atoms.’

Andrei was surprised by how easily the monster was convinced.

‘I’ll go get the atom, and I’ll conduct the demonstration here.’

‘Very well. Guards, escort him.’

Andrei went back to the atom, which he realised earlier was secured in its mid-air position by a multitude of ropes coming from all sides of the cave. One by one, he started untying the ropes.

‘Careful now’, remarked one of the guards.

‘Of course, I’m just leaving one of the bottom ropes to use to drag the atom to the throne room.’

That is what Andrei did, dragging the thing through the air like some incredibly heavy balloon. It was right up next to the high ceiling. This reassured him that his plan would work.

As he re-entered the throne room, he stood before the king and began his grand demonstration. 

‘Your majesty, it has been revealed by recent scientific discoveries that atoms are in everything, and everything is atoms, and they have existed since the dawn of time, at one point condensed into one tight point and now into multitudes, Into you, into me, into the walls of this cave, into everything outside of it.’

All the little creatures who had gathered in the throne room giggled at every word he said. Nonetheless, he carried on:

‘Atoms are connected together through strong chemical bonds, which is why we have different objects, different solids, different liquids and gases, and so on. You will be hard-pressed to find a lone atom, freely floating around, bonded to nothing. That is why your atom right here is straining my arm so. It’s being attracted by the forces of all the other atoms in this room. If I were to let it go, it would be sure to fly up, or to the left, or to the right, and bond with some other atom. That is my proof that other atoms exist.’

The king was enraged. 

‘Nonsense! That is pure nonsense! Nothing else in this room even looks remotely like an atom.’

‘That’s because most of them are tiny. I still don’t know how you built one so big, but if you managed it, it can’t be that difficult!’

The crowd gasped.

‘How dare you! Let it go right now, and you’ll see nothing of what you are claiming will happen! It’ll float! I’m telling you! Or it’ll fall perhaps! Don’t you know about gravity, you fool!’

Without hesitating any longer, Andrei set the atom free from his grip. The huge thing went hurling up towards the ceiling of the cave at a speed faster than one could comprehend. There was a loud crash, and a stream of white light came streaming into the cave from outside.

‘You fool! What have you done!’ Andrei heard the thundering voice of the king, but he could no longer see anything through the rockfall, not even any other little creatures. As soon as he had let go, anticipating what would happen, he darted back the way he came and ran as fast as he could to the entrance of the cave. All while he ran, he heard echoes of falling rocks, and felt terrible about the fate he had brought upon this strange kingdom. But, alas, it was this or an eternity in the dungeon of another world. Finally, he got far enough from the scene of his escape that he could no longer hear the grating rock fall and stopped running, but to his horror, the cave seemed different from when he first navigated it.

‘Could I have taken a wrong turn?’ He wondered, but kept walking, as there was nothing else to do. The ground suddenly became curiously even, not like the rocky ground of a cave at all. He reached down and felt asphalt at his fingertips. Before he could fully comprehend the surface he had touched, he walked into something large and cold. He felt around, and realised it was his car, just as he had left it. After fumbling around a bit in search of the door, he got in and started the engine, turning on the headlights and revealing a perfect, unscathed windshield and a long, tree-lined road up ahead. After all he had already seen, he asked no questions, and simply drove. Before he could realise that the sky was getting lighter, the orange sun emerged and lit up acres and acres of wheatfields, and the clouds glowed purple in the dawn. No little creatures bothered Andrei again, nor did any kings, or birds, or bellowing voices.

‘Enough of all that, for now. Maybe one day I’ll visit them all again.’