When the world was placed, it was put carefully, right next to a star cluster – a globular one at that – and it looked quite nice, yes, against the backdrop of fire and light and little fluffs of nebula particulates. It was fragile, so fresh the rock as it was, and it was an imbued with a shield, both magnetic and polarized, so that it may rebound flares from the nearby stars. It was layered, too, this world, with twelve different densities, that ranged from an iron core to a flowing coarse blue sand. The purpose? The creator, oh almighty they were, believed discovery was the greatest emotion the universe had fabricated, and wishes for this world to be discoverable for its occupants.

In the way this creator worked, well, they were a curator actually, and one named, Goblig Melun, but preferred to go by Goblun. None of the worlds, did Goblun ever move, not one gas Goblun spread like butter across the bread of spacetime, no sun was Goblun’s forth-birth. Not a star, not even the space between which did not radiate and was therefore called dark because no one wanted to see it, let alone could. Goblun curated, not created.

Goblun curated carefully and what Goblun had organized, Golbun named “Golbun’s Gallery.” And it was just that, yes. A fine nook of the universe where travellers could come and admire the way the order had been reigned in.

“My, my, just look here,” would say a fellow greased up astronaut to their companion, “now that’s a placement of a titanium atom I’ve never seen before.” With a finger, then, they would go to prod it too, but Goblun had quark-alarms all about and these spun noisily to scare them off.

“My eyes, me eyes!” would another say – perhaps a couple, welded at the hip and sharing their organs as a symbol of devout love – looking upon a star that was not one but twelve, shaped in the iconic tentacle of galactic freedom. “A display of courage that burns the cones from my wet balls and I must look because it tears me up in two ways.”

And Goblun, who always sat behind a gas giant that was particularly pink and oscillated between two sizes: big and small, Goblun watched these visitors to the gallery come and go, to and fro, and each one would Goblun remember and thank, quietly. Goblun, too, took rigorous notes on pages that were stored inside a nearby black hole. At night Goblun ignored cries for sleep, instead studying the notes that had diligently been taken from the day before. They read things such as:

I notice, yes, a guest has taken a dislike to the orbit of Planet GreGre-9, but why? It is not the mountains, which are very tall and sometimes poke the away, something else? Ah, let’s see.

I think I have it yes, the guest was unfamiliar with vegetative root organisms. Planet GreGre-9 is riddled with them, so packed tight it is all green from the leaves. Yes, considering, the way those leaves flop and flap, so fragile and it is unnatural. I’ll move this one to a darker corner.

And Goblun did precisely that, taking Planet GreGre-9 three orbits back inside a distant solar system, position eight, where it was not the first thing that guests to the gallery would see.

Curious. Two machines arrived, full of wires and incredibly electronic. Such construction is a producer of fields, and strong ones at that. I noticed it by their first footfalls, which echoed to my ears by way of solar emission vibration. These two machines, with smiles that went twice round them, I do not want to speak ill of them, but to bring such great electromagnetic fields to a fragile place, well my planets were really put through the works. One, Hootenaray 9X, it was completely flipped! Its negative pole of the top, now on the bottom, its positive pole of the bottom, now the top. I will have to remember to turn Hootenaray 9X upside-down tonight.

And Goblun did precisely that. But flipping is not a process which should be taken lightly for a planet such as Hootenaray 9X, for its seas are made of a metallic liquid soup, its currents predominantly mercurial, its crests garnished with zinc. These are metals of the responsive kind, which means they acknowledge the existence of magnets by moving themselves. This is all to say, that when Goblun flipped Hootenaray 9X, Goblun was so tired from little sleep that it was done carelessly. The motion changed the flow of the planet: the winds that went east to west now went east to west – instantly! There were seventy major ocean currents, rare ones, and these all had to turn around within a second and no less. Everything in motion had to reverse in a moment.

This caused a reaction, for the zinc wanted to move one way, the mercury the other, and a range of metals all the other ways yet not unmentioned. They swirled and swelled and could only go up. Thousands of columns shot to the sky and into space. Their tops, once they reached the vacuum, completely froze solid and became ballistic missiles. Hootenarary 9X did this from all points on its surfaces and was transformed into a everywhere-canon of metallic rods, fired out dangerously. Goblun could hardly get behind the gas giant in time, before the rods whizzed by. But Goblun’s life was the only thing that could be saved: the rods hit and tore through everything else. It may not even have been a large rod, but the speed, and because these rods were such a mixture of too many metals, reactions were inevitable.

Goblun stared, transfixed and sick in all stomachs. Stars, the red ones, went supernova twice over, and if they were larger and blue, they collapsed fast and went black and pulled at the space too much. Planets would never survive this, even if you gave them thirty rings, and they broke in half, half again, and down until they were dust. This dust was then pulled by great forces from the hundreds of recently-born black holes around it, and it spun and drew about like a painter on a melting canvas. There were no orbits to be had around the holed-space, all of it too close together. But from afar, where Goblun was, it was horrific, yet not without a tinge of admiration. A display happening that was now so incredible, full of colour from all the different planets torn apart, and many that were very very far away turned, and looked up, to see this wonderful display of colour cake the sky like a swarm possessed. Goblun wanted to shout, “No! My wonderful gallery!” But there were no more suns nearby to carry the sound of the shout.

But this image of destruction, finally after ten solar units of expansion, did it settle, stable. And Goblun, by this time, had accepted the misfortune and moved on to another part of the universe and begun curation anew. But the disaster left behind, it was so wonderful and brown and blue, green, turquoise struck through, it glowed – shimmered! – and some looked at it through infrared eyes and saw more than they could handle and became instantly bedazzled. Such a wonder of form and colour, this disaster space was named and left to be and churn, its name given for the fact that some of the columns from Hootenarary 9X’s explosion had not been destroyed, but hung and dissolved slowly over many years, spread out into larger looking columns that also rusted brown. The name they gave it was the Pillars of Curation, after Goblun the curator. But over time, by way of mouth, the name changed, as names have a way of doing, and now, yes, it would be told to you that it was called the Pillars of Creation.