The toy viewed its creator and its fallen brother silently. It turned to 
the Manager. The Manager wrapped a tendril around the lever. The 
man fell to his knees before his superior, but was ignored. Anthony 
lowered himself to watch the man dig into his bag sitting by the 
console. The man brought out a small tube that reminded Anthony 
of toothpaste, holding it as if his arms were chopsticks. The man 
chewed off one end and bit the tube, squirting something yellow- 
green onto the stumps he called wrists. The man fiddled with the 
wreckage before stuffing the metal ball into the bag. He hooked his 
arm through the bag's straps and dashed off. Anthony noticed that 
the man's hands were somehow reattached, though they didn't look 
to be moving. The Manager watched the man run off and pulled 
what looked like a pistol from seemingly nowhere. 


The Manager spoke in words Anthony did not understand and aimed 
the pistol at the retreating toymaker. 


The toymaker let out a yell that Anthony didn't understand the 
meaning of, though he at least understood the words. 


The toy responded to its maker's cry by opening up its chest and 
firing a rocket at the Manager's face. 


The floor of The Factory that Anthony was on stopped. The 
conveyor belts halted, the welding torches went out, and for a brief 
moment the workers didn't even breathe. Then something broke the 
silence. A single sentence, spoken in a tinny voice. Something no 
doubt meant for the dying Manager. 


"DO NOT INTIMIDATE THE WORKING MAN." 


A Simple Paradigm Shift 


"| just can't believe it. These people have no business shoving each 
other. We're all getting on the bus...Damn thing's empty, after all." 


The old black woman who'd lamented her fellow passengers' lack of 
courtesy sighed. Her silently judging gaze locked onto a younger 
woman in a grey housekeeper's uniform waiting patiently to board. 
Her gaze blank and serene, she was not muttering curses upon 
Metro officials’ firstborn children or pleading with their phones for 
pardon of their tardiness. She looked like a young girl, at most in her 
early twenties, but she carried herself with the sort of slow 
deliberation that came with age. The old woman pulled herself up 
straight as the housekeeper exited the bus. Patience, the old black 
woman thought as she watched the younger woman walk into the 
lush vegetation of Beverly Hills. Something the young lack. 


The younger woman, however didn't lack patience. Perhaps it was 
because she wasn't really all that young at all. Perhaps it was 
because she was a little bit off. But really, it was because forces of 
nature are not to be rushed. They are deliberate. They plan. They 
bide their time, carefully waiting until the right moment. So was she, 
Dr. Molly Jayawadena, goddess-in-training. 


Dr. Jayawadena's brilliant but fractured mind had slowly narrowed in 
on Los Angeles as a choice of sanctuary. While she saw the chaos 
of the city as a sick aberration, some masochistic crevice of her 
mind was drawn to it like flies to rotten flesh. The endless mayhem 
of the City of Angels was perfect for someone who wanted to hide 
among people wrapped up in the endless minutiae of their 
uninspired lives. 


Molly stumbled on the shimmering, impermanent ground. Where 
most only saw perfectly manicured gardens and obscenely 
extravagant houses, she saw rippling quantum chaos, particles that 
were not particles blinking in and out of solidity, chained together 
like jewelry made of energy and not-empty space. Atomic cogs 


meshing together like tiny keys turning the clockwork of cellular life. 
Blocks of protoplasm forming leafy greenness or warm red flesh. 
The framework of the world seethed and bubbled under her gaze, 
maddeningly, eternally. It was like those optical illusions that 
overloaded your senses and pierced your brain with confusion and 
pain. It was a disgustingly cluttered veil on the reality that had to be 
done away with as soon as possible. 


Dr. Jayawadena had already entered the gaudy faux-Baroque 
monstrosity of a house through the unassuming servant's door. 
Molly was prone to losing large gaps of time like this. She now found 
herself conducting a bizarre and pointless ritual on a pane of glass 
with a spray bottle of Windex and some newsprint. If Molly 
concentrated on exactly how odd and pointless it was, she could 
avoid feeling aggressive atoms dig themselves into the microscopic 
feelers of her nose, remain blind to the iridescent bands on the 
window and the quantum electrodynamical equations that described 
them...Molly closed her eyes. 


The woman of the house entered the room. She was a visually 
pleasing pile of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and potassium; she was 
wealthy, famous, and utterly inconsequential. The woman shifted 
her center of gravity, causing a temporary imbalance before 
catching herself with her other leg. She repeated this motion, this 
controlled imbalance, the rhythmic almost-falling, until she reached 
Molly. "| want this house spotless for our meeting tonight. It has to 
be perfect. Some real important people are coming." She sighed in 
irritation before stooping over to Molly. "Big meeting. Important. 
Clean hard. Comprende?" 


Molly nodded vigorously. The owners of the house seemed to be 
under the impression that Molly spoke no English and was in the 
country under less than legal circumstances. It wasn't a hard sell 
thanks to Molly's dark complexion, exotic features, and the banal 
racism of the wealthy in Southern California. Plus, the current 
arrangement allowed Molly to disregard this world's odd song and 
dance about the exchange of goods and services. 


The woman shifted into the media room as a flash of something 
caught Molly's eye. 


Her employer was wearing a large, polished stone on her wrist. 
Molly halted even the pretense of work to consider this. The stone 
reflected a very distinctive wavelength of light, somewhere in the 
neighborhood of 510 nanometers. Nothing too unusual by itself, but 
the frequency of light reflected off that stone was disharmonious with 
the frequency of light reflected by the woman's clothing, and that 
was utterly outside the bounds of the woman's normal behavior. 
Molly remembered that the woman had been telling her equally 
pretty and vapid friends that it was a gift from some very important 
people she was entertaining. 


Molly decided that she wanted to observe these "very important 
people”. And since she was Dr. Molly Jayawadena, Bringer of the 
Perfect Universe, she had every right to know whatever she wanted 
to know. She frowned before fiddling with the newsprint in her hand. 
The world as it was did not recognize Dr. Jayawadena's natural 
entitlement to all imaginable knowledge. She would have to listen in 
secret, hidden in the shadows. 


Night fell as Molly's weary gray coworkers leave the mansion. Molly 
herself was standing, unobserved, in a corner of the wine cellar. 
Shaking her head, she pressed a finger to the carefully balanced 
panel (poorly) concealing the secret passageway. She knew that 
others were blissfully unaware of the nonstop whispers of the 
universe, but she would have thought someone would have noticed 
the odd draft down there. The panel swung open silently into total 
darkness as Molly stepped in. Shutting the panel behind her, she 
began to feel her way into the tunnel. 


Molly could have brought a flashlight but the possibility of others 
patrolling this hallway stopped her. Besides, she wasn't so 
disoriented in the darkness. She didn't have to feel photons and 
their always shifting nature bouncing wildly off her surroundings and 
into her eyes. Molly continued to navigate by touch, strangely at 
peace. 


The calm faded as a thin line of bluish light appeared ahead of 
Molly. Now, she stuck to the walls, silently inching towards the light 
until she could see the outline of a door. Gingerly, Molly pulled the 
door open just enough for her to peek inside. 


The light was blinding compared to the darkness of the hallway, but 
as her eyes adjusted Molly realized that the silvery light was actually 
rather dim. Human figures in dark green robes sat in a circle around 
a copper stem topped with a large translucent pale green glass 
globe. Molly's eyes raised to the ceiling. Bright points of light were 
suspended in an ink blue field. With a start, Molly recognized Orion. 
It was a perfect map of the night sky over LA, sans light pollution. 
Molly decided that because she was the Bringer of Order, the 
Purifier of Nature, she was well within her rights to enter this room. 
She glided past the door and around the dark corners of the 
chamber. The people in the circle were completely focused on the 
center and did not notice their visitor. Molly recognized the man and 
woman of the house, looking unusually humble and abashed. A man 
next to them wearing a five-pointed diadem on his head offered 
them a large incense coil on a copper platter. "The honor is yours 
tonight," he intoned in a strange voice that seemed to come, not 
from his mouth, but the walls of the entire room. 


The woman produced a small candle and lit the incense, hands 
trembling. "Slon thrli phthle Fifth ynvo,” she chanted. 


"Slon thrli phthle Fifth ynvo," the circle chanted back. 


Molly leaned back into the dark, heart racing as a horrible realization 
descended upon her. The incense, the chanting in a strange 
language, the odd clothes. Her employers had done it. They'd gone 
and become Catholics. Well, no matter. She'd fought her way out 
once, she could do it again if she had to. 


Her panicked train of thought was suddenly arrested by a voice. "Thl 
brn, brothers and sisters. All good Fifthists are welcome. The 
heretics have not prevailed. Yvne, we will rise again." 


"Slon thrli phthle Fifth ynvo," chanted the circle. Confused, Molly 
tried to figure out who had spoken. 


"The Foundation heretics grow nearer. But their arrogance cripples 
them. Remember, brethren, they almost failed. Matter will not save 
them. The Fifth World will rise." 


"Slon thrli phthle Fifth ynvo." 


Molly observed that each word spoken by the mysterious voice 
seemed to correspond with puffs of smoke sent out by the incense 
coil. She hypothesized that this pattern would continue. Continued 
observation was in order. 


"The Fifth World is not. Neither has it ever been. But soon it will be. 
Minds and stars align anon. The Fifth world is Freedom." 


"Slon thrli phthle Fifth ynvo." 


Molly's hypothesis was solid so far. Now, the woman leaned over 
the incense and took a deep breath in. She shut her eyes tight and 
held the smoke in her chest as the circle looked on silently. She 
exhaled thick green smoke as two voices intoned, "All worlds die in 
fives." Molly started. One of the voices that came from the woman's 
mouth was her normal, nasal speaking voice. The other was the 
mysterious voice that had been speaking before. The woman 
passed the incense to her paramour, who inhaled as she did, and 
spoke the same words as he exhaled. And again, the mysterious 
voice came from him along with his own. 


"All worlds die in fives," he breathed as he passed the coil on. 


Well, Molly thought to herself, unless they'd severely restructured 
the Communion service, this was not a meeting of Catholics. She 
watched with growing confusion as every member of the circle 
repeated the ritual. The room was beginning to fill with green smoke, 
but it was not dispersing as smoke does. It pooled at the celebrants' 
feet, sending out tendrils like some undiscovered sea animal. Green 
tentacles snaked across the bodies of the assembly, as every 
celebrant tilted their heads up and spewed a thicker, black smoke 
from their mouths. This smoke mingled with the green as every 
celebrant hummed a deep, barely audible tone felt deep within the 
ribs and spine. 


"Now...now hold on one goddamned minute!" shouted Molly. 


The celebrants leapt to their feet, screeching. The green smoke 
suddenly gathered itself like a frightened squid and swept back to 
the incense coil, enveloping it. Molly marched into the circle as the 
celebrants screamed in unison a harsh, dissonant tone. 


"Everybody...you all...just-just be quiet! All of you!" Molly thrust her 
finger into the man with the diadem's face. "I don't, | mean, if you, 
that is... That smoke is not acting the way smoke should act! It's 
acting more, you know, it's just that, it's a/ive, but of course not 
really..." Molly rubbed at her eyes in frustration as she tried to 
collect her thoughts. 


The man of the house gaped at her. "What the he-you spoke 
English this entire time?" 


Molly answered, not facing him, "I was born just outside Chicago. 
Now tell me...you explain...that thing over there," she pointed at the 
hovering incense cloud. 


The man with the diadem had maintained a neutral expression 
throughout Molly's interrogation. Molly wondered briefly if his face 
hadn't been paralyzed when he spoke from seemingly closed lips. 
"Your curiosity is your downfall. You will long for death." 


"Hold your wrath, Your Grace." Everyone turned with wonder to the 
green cloud shrouding the incense coil. "The ptlwi did not sound. It 
should have announced her. It allowed her to enter. It is worth 
asking why." 


The woman piped up. "Maybe it's, like, broken or..." Every other 
celebrant except her darling whipped their head around and hissed, 
cowing her into silence. The large green cloud left the incense coil 
and floated over to Molly. 


"Breathe me in, rash woman," it commanded. Molly, figuring that 
she'd gotten this far on bad decisions, shrugged and inhaled deeply. 
The smoke slipped into her lungs like the slimy predestination of a 
half-remembered nightmare. It left a bitter, evil taste in her mouth. It 
wanted the quantum anarchy that tormented her vision stripped of 
even those lax laws that governed it, expanded, reconfigured. If her 
New Nature was heaven, the Fifth World was hell. Struggling to 
remain calm against the invasive presence, Molly slowly exhaled. 


Mercifully, the smoke shot out of her nostrils and wrapped itself 
around the large glass globe above them. It began to glow with a 
pulsing green light until the smoke drifted down to its coil. A small 


slip of paper popped out of a slot in the copper support. The man in 
the diadem picked it up and read it. Though his face did not change, 
Molly could feel a jolt of wonder surge through him. 


"Fives alive, she's a 998," he breathed. Silence reverberated 
through the room before everyone began to whisper. The woman's 
nasal voice sliced through the charged air. 


"So, what does that mean?" she asked irritatedly. 


"She sees the world's wrongness. Nature's sins call to her. She can 
undo it all. She can birth Fifth World." To Molly he said, "You have 
failed once before. Machines will always fail. The observer changes 
the observed. We have succeeded thus before. The mind shall bring 
salvation." 


The hot, acidic taste of failure returned to Molly as sharp as it had 
been that day in her university apartment. He was right, the machine 
had failed. And he was right again in that every enthusiastic 
undergrad knew that an observer could collapse the wavefunction. 
What implications did that have for The Project? Could she really 
use human consciousness to rewrite the laws of nature? 


It was definitely worth investigation, and these people seemed to 
know something. Even if their Fifth World was the antithesis of her 
vision, even if their robes were strange and their chants blood- 
chilling, science was science. Discoveries made by the Nazis, 
draped in mindless cruelty and stupid occultism, are still discoveries. 


"I will...l mean, of course | would like...If you would..." Molly 
stopped and collected herself before smiling darkly. "Slon thrli phthle 
Fifth ynvo."