[ WP ] You have always had a vivid imagination , dreaming up fantastic worlds filled with interesting people , places and adventures . What you do n't know is that these worlds are real - and you are their deity .

Sarah had been surprisingly angry when I told her I'd stopped writing. I think she remembered how happy it used to make me. I promised to pick it up again, but if I did, it would have been for her, not for me. Today was the day, and I found myself doing it anyway. Coffee in my left hand, mouse in my right, Bob the goldfish blubbing at me expectantly in his bowl next to my monitor. I clicked on my old writing folder and started going through old documents, looking for a place to jump back in. Something to show Sarah, to ease her mind. 
 Half an hour later, I was staring at mazes of text and struggling to rewind the threads of plot I'd abandoned months ago, of the races that existed only in my mind, only on this computer, only in scrawled images on discarded post-it notes. 
 
 
 
 The Delfin, from *Leagues Beneath*, with their gills and fins and culture of cruelty, factions of emancipators battling to bring an underwater civilization into the new, peaceful age. Their leaders were still imprisoned in the clam-prisons of Rashe. 
 
 
 
 The'people' of Fenholm, from *Savage Hearts* - clans of beast men that knew only war. Clan-Thenn Rommarr led his people on a doomed march across tundra wastes of a cave, rumoured to hold a great power that could unite their people through brute force, bring peace in the only way these men knew. 
 
 
 
 There were so many others, but the last abandoned civilization of note were hidden away in a document titled only as'unknown,' in a folder labeled'Maybe.' The Electorate. I opened it up and immediately remembered the kind of place I was when I'd written about them. It was a bad time. Insomnia and paranoia had fueled their hasty conception over the space of a week, a kind of involuntary expulsion of bad thoughts manifested into something that now made me uneasy. Reels upon reels of exposition had exposed in great detail every deed of these, essentially human, collectivist technophiles. Instead of writing *stories*, I had written history books. 
 
 
 
 They had a peculiar look to them, according to the annals I'd penned. In their most recent iteration, just prior to The Melding, they had been homogenized through gene therapy and the departure of the fruitless sin of vanity; thin, tall frames were adorned in midnight blue robes and masks of some carved alien metal covered the tops of their heads. The little visible skin they had below their mouths and on their long, emaciated hands was remarkably pale. 
 The defining moment of their culture had been a melding of their minds. After centuries of tireless research, they successfully linked the consciousness of every member of their race. It was to be their ascendancy. Having solved all of the problems a people could face on a physical level - hunger, war, environmental dangers - the only way forward was to think as only one being could think. Godhood. A proud and arrogant people, they had not accounted for failure. 
 
 
 
 Insanity flooded in, infected the network, corrupted minds and data and code. No one mind could hold the amount of information that they had pooled over their millennia of galactic exploration, of science and philosophy and fiction and fear. The Electorate hivemind'broke.' 
 
 
 
 I paused as I scanned through my old work. The Melding was described in no great detail. Events and consequences were explained, in fairly sparse order. But after that, my writing had become... damaged. Garbled. Stream of consciousness, if the consciousness was highly disturbed. It was n't that long ago that I had supposedly written this - was n't it about 10 months? That's when'It' happened, so it must have been around then - but I could n't remember doing it. It felt like the end of *Ulysses*, while somehow making even less sense, and, a lot like *Ulysses*, it went on for bloody ages. It finally stopped, mid-sentence. 
 
 
 
 One sentence stood out. 
 
 >'the worlds the rip the worlds i see them we see them what we knew what i know is true the gap is open for we have made it the way is forward and backward and up it is everywhere and it is always and it has never been and never seen us as we have seen it the white the open the stretch you were born of us maker master creator abandoned alone abandoned alone abandoned alone abandoned alone' 
 
... and so on and so forth. Garbled bullshit. It had been a very bad time. I forced aside my unease and moved on. 
 
 
 
 That aside, I had been pleasantly surprised by the majority of my reading. I started trawling through my unfinished portfolio in the bright early evening, and now the last of the orange sunlight was dribbling away over the horizon, spraying through my window. 
 
 
 
 Where to start? I sipped coffee. Cold. Gross. I opted for the Delfin. I liked where their story was going. It was like the French resistance in World War 2 meets *Aquaman*. Having already familiarized myself with where I had been leading them, I returned to the last sentence. 
 
'... Lusha'a felt her coral-coloured spines thrust up out of her back in terror as finsteps approached. The cells were drained of water for maximum discomfort, and so there was nothing to obscure the sounds of tortured screams from fellow revolutionaries. Louder and louder, they padded towards her, three approaching figures, fear rushing up through her veins untillllll l l l ll -' 
 
 Huh. Piece of shit keyboard.'L' key must have been stuck. I stopped, sighed, cursed and got back to it. 
 
'... fear rushing up through her veins untilll ll ll*l l l l blue midnight robes pitch black masks tall and slender frames moving as one knowing as one thinking as-* 
 
 
 
 *NO. * That was n't me. I had not written that. I had thrown myself away from the desk. I had not written that. Had I? I could n't remember. It was five seconds ago and I could n't remember. 
 
 I pulled myself back towards the desk, trembling. I placed my thumb on the alt key and my middle finger on tab, and dared myself to press down. 
 
 When *Seven Leagues* came up on the screen again, it was empty. A white sheet of nothing. A blank document. I hurled my cursor at the undo button, praying I'd just accidentally deleted everything in a panic, and nothing happened. It was gone. 
 
 I slowly turned my head to Bob in his bowl. He blubbed, sympatheticallyThe Delfin were gone, and I did n't know why. I considered that I may have had a backup somewhere. If I did n't, I would mourn for them. 
 
 But only after I had worked out what was going on. I felt the cool grip of fear send pinprick kisses down my arms and the back of my neck as I remembered the lines of text pouring in. Maybe it was just a bug. Maybe Word was just getting my documents mixed up with one another? That did n't really make any sense, but I ignored sense, and persuaded myself to calm. 
 
 I tried Fenholm. 
 
 The last I remembered, Rommarr had just discovered the cave he'd been seeking, but I had n't worked out what was inside, yet. He'd found a door, that much I knew, a door that looked out of place with the natural, earthy environment. I did n't remember what I'd planned for it, but I thought I'd try and work it out. I tabbed back into *Savage Hearts* and read the last few lines. 
 
 >'... Rommarr placed his huge, rugged hands on the door and heaved with all his might. The widening crack burst with an unearthly light, causing the barbarian to squeeze his eyes tight. Once the smooth, cold entry had been widened enough for him to fit through, he lowered his trembling, drained arms to his sides and dared to open his eyes. What awaited him was nnn*nothing figures and robes and figures and robes masks through the tear through the rip adorned blades blade under robes of deepest blue umbra through the unworthy the maker's favourites the undeserving fit to bleed bleed'* 
 
 Words typed themselves. Letters dribbled into existence on the screen in front of me and described the torment in mad joy, like a poem. Described The Electorate ripping apart the characters I had brought to life in my mind, characters that had kept me company in the loneliest of times. 
 
 *'ripping tearing found the king killed the king cut his throat tore it out maker will see creator will love us love me love us love me-'* 
 
 A tear rolled onto my splayed fingers, clutching at my face as the death of Rommarr was detailed vividly. 
 
 *'the king of no one king of lie king of false dead king no king king of dead people no people one people under the maker he tests us he finds us unworthy he makes no more he leaves us'* 
 
 The horror crawled back up my spine. 
 
'*maker will see maker will love us maker love us please creator know me make me*' 
 
 I slowly lowered a shaking hand to press a key, any key, to respond. 
 
 The horror vanished. As did *Savage Hearts. * Blank screen. In a trance I went back into my folder and reopened'unknown.' 
 
 Blank. Relief and joy dared each other to steal back into my trembling chest, and were killed before they arrived. 
 
 Frenzied prayers scrawled themselves on the screen. 
 
'*i kneel we kneel i pray we pray you all power you all knowing creator maker endless love hopeless death death*' 
'*maker we arr r re ee e s ss oo oooo cccc l ll oo sssssssssss eee e*' 
 
 They were, they were so close, I could feel their infinite breath on my back, I stood, I turned, their voices stung in my ears and ripped at my mind and I opened my eyes to see... nothing. 
 
 There was nothing. A gasp of relief shivered out of me. Just a door, just a bed, just a poster, just a window. 
 
 Until it all l l fffe ll awwaawayyy y y and *robes and masks and robes and masks of deepest blue kneeling endless kneeling praying kneeling praying blades of endless blue and blade of joy and robes and masks kneeling and knowing and*
