The Taste, released by the Painter, did not reach all the worlds simultaneously, as the Painter was a connoisseur and would not have permitted simultaneity; simultaneity is the resort of beings who cannot afford pacing.
To a being of its level, suffering and depravity had to be stretched out in such an extended time period that it would be impossible for any lesser immortal to even comprehend the length of time that would pass while it feasted.
The taste reached the worlds in a wave, the Painter shaped by hand, beginning at the outermost branches and moving inward, so that the inhabitants of the inner branches would have time, in the early stages of the wave, to learn what was happening on the outer branches and to know it was coming for them.
