Time

[shadow pridak money gang]

Time. One of those quirky little concepts that can stop something in its tracks like a solid, flow like a liquid, and surround us like a gas. It can be used for a multitude of purposes, none of which are inherently sinister but all of which inevitably kill. Time is one of those quirky little things that can be seen right in front of you, but can never be touched. Like air. Imagine plucking a molecule out of the air and crushing it between two digits, squeezing the life out of it like a ripe berry. This is what time does to you.Transcending time is a fool's wish, and I know this; mortals have no sway over time. It cannot be bribed, bought, negotiated with, or argued against. Only those truly immortal, unstoppable, immobile against the cold wind of time, can rise to consider themselves worthy of the mantle deity, and, as such, take the reins of time. Stuck here, in this robot body millions of feet high and wide and finally omnipresent at last, I start to wonder exactly how long the warranty on this thing lasts. All this water damage from being stuck on this miserable watery hellhole of a planet can't be doing wonders for this thing's legs.The time I kill is killing me. My name is Makuta Teridax, and for the last few months I have been squandering my newfound occupation as God by picking off random Dark Hunters and ex-minions as I see fit. Allies would not be the right word for these people: after all, does death have allies? Does God have equals, those he stands alongside? No, of course not, for he is all-powerful and all-knowing. He does not burden himself with the petty whims of mortals, those he knows can never truly stand at his level.Neither does time.Of course, this gets boring after a while, as all things inevitably do. After you listen to the same song one hundred times in a row, you inevitably tire of it and replace it. This is why pinning down the concept of something "favorite" is so worthless: you are not everlasting. You will not last forever. Nor will your interests. Inevitably, something new will come along, and the old will be discarded, swept under the metaphorical rug of all that once was and all that shall never be again. The new will come along sooner or later, all glittery and loving and so inconceivably beautiful that the old will be discarded to the deepest recesses of the subconscious. Nothing will - nothing can - be permanent.Except time.Here in this new body, I see all things, and I become all things at the moment of my choosing. And yet...I am bored. We Makuta were always a proud race, proud of what we were, proud of what we had aimed for. What did we aim for, you ask? The answer is beautifully simple. Power.You see, the world is designed for those who know how to use it. This plan, MY plan, it was no master stroke of genius. Oh, it was beautiful, my magnum opus, a masterstroke of simplicity and sheer audacity that should have never worked. And yet, it did. Why is this? Because of power. My influence stretched through the darkest recesses of every species on every island in every inlet, and it showed. No longer were the Matoran a species of angels, the lifeblood of a Great Spirit who had doomed them to eternal servitude. No, they were beyond that: they had become an emotional species, with drives and emotions and senses of virtue. Whose fault was this? Not the Great Spirit's, no: if he had gone through with his divine programming, Mata Nui would have left the Matoran to their fate as serfs to a higher cause, mindless robots built to be consumed. I gave them life. However, after the time spent in this new form, I have found that power...has its downsides.Namely, boredom.And now they have elevated me to the position of savior, which I have gladly accepted. I still do relish it, after all: there is nothing quite like demolishing someone just for walking the wrong way or breathing too fast. It's a blissful mindset that a true sociopath would never want to escape from. However, it is not escape I have in mind. It's...expansion. I've set up a nice little franchise in this little pond; however, I feel - I know - that I can do more. And so I will. Soon. I will take my leave from this world and extend my tendrils of influence to every moon of every planet of every star system. No speck of space will be beyond my reach.After all, I have all the time in the world.-Teezy

[Aderia]

Right, well, when I walked into this story topic, it took like five whole minutes of wading through penguins to finally reach the actual story.I didn't find any spelling/grammar/typo issues, nor did I expect to. But there was one thing I actually did have a problem with.

Stuck here, in this robot body millions of feet high and wide and finally omnipresent at last, I start to wonder exactly how long the warranty on this thing lasts.

The fact that you go from all that beautiful language about time and liquid/solid/gas and mortals/immortals, and then finally being a god, straight into asking about a warranty like on an old phone or something, it was kinda like an anticlimax for me.But anyways, and on another note, I think you mentioned this line earlier;

The time I kill is killing me.

Genius. ;)So the overall tone of the story really helped to characterize Teridax in all his anarchical glory. Good work has been done here.Now...finding my way out of here without tromping on any penguins....

[The Lord Of Wednesday]

Official SSCC Review of Time by #firstworldtyler (review done by Proud Stigma).Well let me be (presumably) the first to thank you for your submitting of this short story and to Velox for giving me the opportunity to review it.First I will start with critiques and you will be happy to hear that I really only have one when it comes to the story, and it is thankfully subjective. The intro may on time my be a little long for some. If you look at the first paragraph, I do feel that it could have been left out (and while doing so, including minor tweaks to the second paragraph to make it slightly more intro friendly) without impacting the story's overall integrity.Grammar is a similar story, you got everything right for the most part. Nothing here really broke my focus. Now the spell check on BZP's post system did detect the word "newfound" as misspelled, but I'll let it pass as looking up the term indicates that "newfound" actually is a proper way to spell it.Anyway, now onto the good aspects of the story, and they greatly outweigh the critiques I have given above. Other then giving us a rather well written fan perspective into the mind of Teridax, it asks some very important philosophical questions and implications that get the reader to think. I personally think this is where the story gets it's merits.Among the questions and concepts, the most prominent ones being "what motivates god?", and "the journey is more important than the destination.", questions that, for all Teridax is worth, never bothered to contemplate here. When he achieves the seat of power he has fought so hard for, he has realized that his position is meaningless. This invokes thoughts of existentialism, bringing forth other ideas, like the idea that gods create to give themselves purposes in their eternal existences, just like Teridax does when he vows to conquer the entire universe, claiming he has all the time he could ever need to do so. However when you consider what Teridax said earlier about interests, he seems to have submitted himself to damnation, knowing but not admitting that he will eventually tire of conquest too. Something you could consider as irony when thought of enough is that the enemies which he has now apathetically regarded as mere insects compared to him now have even greater causes and motivations to exist, namely stopping this tyrannical god-like figure, essentially giving them the last laugh, metaphorically.The next positive point was about the character you have written for Teridax. Specifically his morality, and how you have abandoned the old cliche of "being evil for the sake of evil", giving the matoran things that any romantic thinker would have considered invaluable (and as it would seem in the main story, taken for granted). His self-depiction as a savior is a great alternate character interpretation, and one that is not that explored in the main Bionicle story, at least not that sympathetically anyway.Now there is something that I find most brilliant in your story, and it is that you don't seem to forsake the deductive skills of the audience. My interpretation up there is one of many, it may not have even been the intended one, but it was all inspired by your writing. However, in all of my thinking, these were inspired without having to directly spell it out for the reader, and that I believe takes quite a bit of skill. It gives something of an extra to a curious reader to go about finding all the interesting implications and interpretations in your story, investigating concepts hitherto unknown until reading this.Anyway #firstworldtyler, I thoroughly enjoyed your work and look forward to the possibility of reviewing your future works. I hope this review was beneficial, thanks again for posting and choosing the SSCC.

Edited June 13, 2012 by Proud Stigma

[fishers64]

Well, I have to hand it to you here - this is a terrific work. You've managed to balance some weighty philosophical truths about time (and how even the mighty Teridax cannot escape it), with welcome comic relief, such as:

Stuck here, in this robot body millions of feet high and wide and finally omnipresent at last, I start to wonder exactly how long the warranty on this thing lasts. All this water damage from being stuck on this miserable watery hellhole of a planet can't be doing wonders for this thing's legs.

Little existentialist, however - but I guess that's appropriate for a villain. Evil eats itself from the inside out, leaving no hope.