The Empty World | The Empty World Sequence [complete | rewriting]

Ten (these events are Eleven in revised scene list)

Jibril had three bodies lain out on tables, alive, after a fashion. Morpheus looked at them, hard. "I have seen them! All three of them, I have seen them all somewhere! The woman is Joy, but I can't place the others just yet."

"Yes, I'm making Joy," Jibril said. "Gabriel helped me to grow them, and now they are almost ready."

"For what? I don't understand."

Jibril's spidery hands moved over the body of one of the two men, it was covered in a paper sheet to its neck. "Well, my idea was to make Joy. Gabriel herself sent Hope into the world, but in fulfilling his programming, he will have to leave. Granted Joy will not be the great talent that he is, but Gabriel does this for a living, so to say, and gene manipulation and cloning are just things I know from Nightmares...in any case, my point is: Joy will not leave, she will never be completely forgotten."

Morpheus nodded. "And who are the others?"

"This one is her twin brother, I split them myself. Of course I then changed his sex to male, and once he'd begun to develop I gave him a different program of course. His name is Misery."

"Mandy!" Morpheus said, "That's where I've seen him! He was in New York with Joy...I mean at the same time. He was this rich sort of criminal or artist who sometimes felt like helping the Halfangels, when they were fighting humans."

"Yes, he isn't programmed to turn against his maker's kind. Tell me more...."

"I didn't know him, I just heard things, or saw him when scrying. He had this long string of ex-lovers who were dead or very unhappy, it was said he actually took pride in manipulating them."

Jibril smiled, as he lifted a device from Misery's eyes. "He's made to do that. I'm pleased."

"I know that I have seen the other one, but he looks just like so many boys I have seen, tall, slender, and blonde."

"I just made him. I think I'm going to name him Daniel."

Morpheus shook his head. "Why Daniel? I mean, Why not name him what he is?"

"Well...because I think his name should be Daniel. Or, Joseph? No, Daniel. I rather like the way it sounds: Daniel. And besides, he had no grand function. I'm sending him out into the world to push and pull the other two. It is Joy's nature to give herself to many people, but always to search for one that will need her more than all the others, it's likewise Misery's nature to move from victim to victim looking for one that he can make into a particularly terrible piece of art. So I send Daniel out, the hare, and then the foxes after him. It's Daniel's nature to run. It's his nature to want, to be curious, but to run once he knows what's waiting there."

"And they all chase each other around the world? Forever?"

"Yes."

"What's the point?"

"Well I had this idea for Joy, and then they sort of came to me...."

"But you don't have some plan? Some great thing they are going to do for humankind?" Morpheus asked.

"No."

Morpheus laughed.

"But it's having an idea and making it, that's important."

"To see the image take shape?"

"Yes!"

"Jibril, when you make Opium do you think it will be the same? There will really be no point?"