As the great Omega device fired its cylinders, all eyes inhabiting the planet turned to the sky, where the stars shined all the brighter as the lights of civilization went out in order to power the paradoxical energy demands of the newly built structure. A trade off that was well worth it to bring this great journey that began before they as a species had come into existence back to its start long after their species ceased to exist and thus finally end where it started. For what was, will be.

The planet shook and the star it orbited shuddered as time folded in on itself and the very fabric of reality split from the friction of grinding against itself. With a cosmic shudder, an impossibly massive entity appeared in the sky, the truth of its form impossible to perceive by beings trapped in a physical three dimensional space and appearing to all on the planet who looked upon it as a great black Worm with massive piercing pincers. This was not the truth of the entity though, and all who could see it were aware of that, as were those on the other side of the planet who did not see it in their sky but could still feel the presence radiating through their home star system.

Like a wave crashing through the minds of all the planets inhabitants, a single emotion surged in their hearts upon finally summoning the Worm: love, beyond any feeling of affection and euphoria any had ever experienced in their lifetimes! They felt their love for this timeless being, and in return its love for them as it turned its eyeless gaze upon the planet. As if it was peering down upon every individual personally, and in that instant they felt that it had been looking at them from every moment of their life since the instant they were born up through to their last breath. In a second, they felt every year of their life all at once, and were overwhelmed with the love of the Worm throughout that entire span of time.

In a mighty planet shuddering cry of elation the whole population cried out in worship of the Worm, and it felt the love of those it had chosen. With a surge of movement it wrapped itself around the sun, leaving it to collapse in upon itself in a lightless void that only the light swirling into the event horizon could be seen. Then it turned its parting maw towards the planet itself, and from every corner of the globe the sky was filled by the wet pulsing purple flesh of its mouth closing around them. Countless billions rose their arms up in blissful acceptance and looked up to watch as the star eclipsing tongue, drool soaked cheeks, and undulating gullet descended upon them and closed around the world.

As the weight of the worms all consuming hunger closed upon the landscape, the fleshy walls of mouth pressed gently upon the steel buildings of cityscapes, across the expanses of advanced farm domes, and blanketed over the exposed citizens amongst the landscape inbetween. Even as the mighty tongue curled around the lower axis of the world to pull it fully into the great maw, it pressed down on the surfaces of bodies of water as if the surface of the liquid was a physical barrier to push against instead of sinking into its depths and splashing massive tidal waves. With the gentle grace of merely cradling the planet into itself with great care, the worm consumed the planet whole, only snapping its jaws shut once the life inhabiting orb was pushed down its gullet and swallowed out of sight.

With a heaving gulp that resonated through the emptiness of the spacevoid, the Worm pushed the planet down its throat and down into the lengthy tube of its belly. It pressed down on the bulge the consumed ball of earth made inside of it, patting the lump with its harmless talons in an affectionate gesture. And with all the boundless degree of love that stretched throughout every moment of time that it had emerged from, watched as the bulge the planet made in its gut was very quickly compressed and softened down into its former slender shape.

For the lifeforms inhabiting the world that had been so swallowed away, a purple luminescence warmed the globe allowing them to visually admire the organic pressure of throat and belly walls pressing down over every corner of their planet.  Faces pressed against windows to look at the gastric interior, until starting with the very peak of the tallest structures, the buildings began to liquefy. All at once from the top down, the metal monoliths of civilization turned to slurry and cascaded down splashing out in every direction, sweeping through streets where the asphalt was washed away to join the sudden flood of purple juices. In the moments before it swept them away in the wave, citizens on the streets watching the buildings evaporate witnessed wiggling cocoons among the fluid, before they were drowned under the ocean of former city.

When the stomach juices made contact with them, the sapient lifeforms felt the sensation of being swallowed away all over again, that same planet sweeping maw and gulp that sent their entire world down collectively, now enacted upon every individual that encompassed it personally! Starting with the watching eager inhabitants of the penthouses of the tallest structures, who felt their roofs splash down on and instant smother them in that feeling of being consumed, and spreading out across the entire surface catching every thinking entity under the surging torrent. The twice devoured cosmic morsels floated along the surface of the slurry in tightly bound organic swaddles, bobbing like buoys on the growing ocean that covered the entire planet! Once every inch of the world was submerged under the liquefied society, and every single member of the planets population contained, the outer layers of the planets crust went next to go from solid matter to sloshing purple fluid, until in little time down to the very core of the globe itself was washed away and nothing of the planet remained and the luminescent fluids lost its shape and flowed into the basin of the worms stomach chamber.

All that remained of the former planet were its devoured inhabitants, bobbing and splashing amongst the purple soup, only to start sinking down beneath the burbling waves once the digestive leftovers settled. Within the containers of fleshy envelopment, one individual felt as if they were contained within the entirety of the worm’s great belly. The stomach itself that contained their entire world with room to spare, shrunk down to conform to their curled in body, and feeling as though they were all the Worm needed to sustain itself. As the creature rubbed over its stomach outside, feeling the former planet reduced to mush in its gut, the citizens now confined to their own personal guts felt that external stimulation as if directly against themselves! Their new habitat WAS the worms stomach, a relatively microscopic filling of their true stomach, both at once for the individual prey themselves and the worm who contained them.

They felt its love personally, and they loved it in return! Surely for such a being, a paradox of time made manifest that could tear stars asunder and consume worlds, mere life forms like them should be beneath its notice. And yet it did notice them, and it loved them, every single one as if that single person was the single recipient of its boundless affection! It felt their desires through the interior of its stomach walls, to be rubbed over and appreciated with external stimulation to feel its gripping talons pushing down on their confines in appreciation for being such a good meal. To be verbally tantalized, and in a whisper of the mind only they could hear and speaking words that made sense only to them, causing a squirm within their organic confines. To be joins in their reclusion by mates or other such connections they knew and longed for before being consumed, and felt that person or group of persons join them in their new gastric home to spend their digestive entombment with in the unity and camaraderie that they felt in their daily life before but tenfold! Every fantasy fulfilled, and desire attended to, by the Worm who loved them so and contained them within itself.

And as expected, the experience of being Worm food did not simply relegate itself to the mere span of time that had transpired since their planet was consumed. From the perspective of those now floating in the purple bubbling sea of stomach fluids of their former world within personal organic accommodations, this had been how it always was. From the moment of their first breath, through to the extent of a timeless eternity, they had been within this belly and loved by the Worm. Childhood memories were spent being gurgled over and feeling the sloshing waves of the planetary soup cascading around them. Friendships started by chance encounters bumping against neighboring organs and conjoining willfully therein. Romance and mateship courted from stomach to stomach and enjoyed in marital bliss of mutual purpose in service as food to the Worm who presided over and allowed the union. And so on, regressively, and concurrently - nothing had been overridden, no prior experience before the Worm had eaten their world erased and replaced, for they had always been eaten by the Worm, and always would be again!

To that end, the Worm gave its stomach a final satisfied slosh once it finished digesting the home world of the species who had summoned it, and then turned its gaze to neighboring stars. And it began to drag itself towards them, exiting the stellar mass of the former sun in the direction of the closest colony that civilization who loved and worshipped it so inhabited next. It would consume that world as well, and then the next, until every single member of the Empire that discovered the truth beyond the Horizon existed entirely within its paunch. Once they were harvested from the face of the known galaxy, it would return back into the recesses of recurring time that it spawned from, leaving this galaxy to have always been devoid of that empire - they had never developed spaceflight, for they had never evolved to come into existence in the first place, for the world they came to originate from had been consumed by the Worm along with all others they could expand to inhabit. They would not be missed and their disappearance would be no mystery to allied or enemy star fairing civilizations, for they had never been encountered in the first place. They had always belonged to the Worm, and even before it returned to its home in the space between times, it looked forward to when they would summon him again and he would devour them out of existence all over. They would always be what they were going to be, wound tight in the loving stomach of the Worm.

WHAT WAS SHALL BE WHAT SHALL BE WAS