Three days. That’s all it took to go from amazement and wonder to sheer terror and paranoia. Waking up each day to find that there are two of you does that to a person, I guess.
I wasn’t surprised when ‘it’ happened.
My brain struggled to cope with the reality presented in front of me. One moment, I’m thoughtlessly walking into the bathroom, next I’m confronting a naked stranger gazing into the vanity mirror, holding scissors and a blowdryer, perplexed as I was. Recognition came slowly, due to the fact I knew my face from a reflective surface’s point of view, or from a camera’s perspective. This life-sized version of me seemed off; wrong even.
The other self, understood what I was, having the advantage of studying me while I was asleep. Whatever interdimensional travel this was, there was no evidence of any portal. Did they find themselves in a world that was almost identical to their own? Or was it me? Either way, the only difference in our immediate existence was that there were now two of us, standing before each other’s alternate selves, staring back at each other with equal parts curiosity and disbelief.
That first day was spent revelling in awe as we looked at ourselves from what we both agreed was another dimension.
“I have been,” I began explaining, “hearing voices ever since I was a toddler. I believed then it was my invisible twin brother until I realized much later the voice was you, another me, from some other place.”
They replied, “When I woke up next to you it was like a dream had somehow turned into reality. I know you have been dreaming about this too. We are the one person. What I dream, you dream.”
I had always wondered what his life would be like if he had made different choices or taken different paths. Now, standing face to face with his alternate self, he finally had the chance to find out.
“You first,” I said.
“What difference does it make?” answered the other me. “This room is exactly the same. My clothes are here. Everything is exactly the same as I left them before went to sleep. Nothing is different from the time I went dosing off. Our timelines are the same. Unless you see anything that’s changed.”
“You’re assuming I’m in your timeline.”
“Am I in yours?”
“I see no point of divergence.”
“Neither do I.”
Our two selves spent hours talking about our lives and experiences, comparing notes on everything from our careers to our relationships. We discovered that we were more alike than we had ever imagined, despite living in different dimensions. Our memories were exactly the same.
As the second night wore on, the other me realized, “I think it is time for you to return home. I’m never going to forget this experience and that it has changed me forever, but this can’t go on. How can this work?”
“Can you go back?” I ask.
“No. I can’t see how.”
“Then how am I supposed to go? Which one of us is in the wrong dimension?”
“Maybe, this is not an inter-dimensional thing. Maybe it’s a mental illness?”
“I’ve thought about that. Been thinking of it the whole time.”
“Me too,” I confess.
“No, shit.”
Madness would be a relief. It would make sense. The voices in my head. The premonitions. The lucid dreams. “Let’s test this.”
“How?”
By morning, I directed my other self out to the kitchen. I put water to boil and opened the refrigerator. “Go get milk.”
“That would prove what?”
“From the neighbour.”
The other me seemed to understand and headed out. By the time I set a pair of cups and saucers, mix the instant coffee with hot water, and let it cool, my doppelganger returned with a bottle of milk.
After we pour in the milk, we both sit and take a sip.
“Return the milk,” said my other self. “She offered pancakes.”
I understood I needed to reciprocate the motion, so I took another sip, picked up the bottle and headed out of my apartment to the retired nurse who lived directly underneath me.
She opened her door and smiled, holding the plate of freshly fried pancakes. “I insist,” she said.
I swapped the milk for the plate and thanked her. When I headed back and confronted my other self with the goods, they were not impressed.
“What? Not proof enough?”
“I don’t know. Should we both go downstairs and ask if she has any syrup?”
The idea horrified me. “Do you realise what kind of attention this would draw? My life, our lives would be turned upside down. Can you imagine the hysteria this would cause?”
“We can say we’re twins.”
“Who’s going to buy that? My family? Yours? We’ll be a freak show. We are two. The same one person, but two bodies. Identical. Mirrored. Cloned.”
“We can say we are clones.”
“There’s no such technology.”
“Hear me out,” I had an idea. “We could use this situation to raise money for developing the technology. We can show investors proof of concept.”
“Who would be the clone?”
“When that thought entered my mind, it killed the mood, but if we…”
“Pretty soon you too will be thinking about how such an enterprise will end badly for both of us. The prospect of revealing our little miracle frightens you as much as me.”
Which one of us was the clone? I thought and felt a sense of dread for having met myself from another dimension if indeed it was that.
“Here’s an idea. We could take turns interacting with our family and the rest of the world. One of us would rest or pursue other interests, the other would go down and live the day.”
“How will it work?”
You quickly came up with the idea. “The ‘plan’ is that one of us should focus on the menial tasks and the other on life choice endeavours. We agree on a rotation system. One week you, one week me.”
“We could hide our secret, but for how long?”
I wondered how long this was going to last. Was this a temporary phenomenon, or something permanent?
On day three there were signs of trouble.
No divergence manifested so far. We both spoke the same. We both behaved the same until I noticed my other self growing less agreeable.
“I don’t think we should share the same lover.”
“We are not currently seeing anybody.” It wasn’t that I didn’t agree with the sentiment, nor was it evidence of a dramatic divergence, but this was not a topic I would ever bring to mind.
“Still, we should pursue different partners. Less awkward that way.”
“That sounds like a brilliant idea, but how are you going to fund any of this?”
“We.”
“How are we going to fund this lifestyle, with one job? Managing the household is one thing, between the two of us, we can manage, but social expenses, luxury purchases, who is going to own what?”
“We can both go to work. That’s two incomes.”
“Not at the same job.”
It dawned on me. “I’m not looking for another job.”
“Why should I go find something else?”
I was going to suggest we coin toss for it but held my idea back. I’m sure my other self thought it, so I didn’t bother. There was always going to be a complication, some convolution, to make life more complicated and more convoluted. I didn’t know how I would feel if my replica got a better job than I had or got into a relationship before I did, or a better-looking partner. It was a strange jealousy, its main subject being basically me.
By midday, we had ceased talking. Taking refuge in separate parts of the apartment. Distrust set in, because if I were suffering from an outbreak of envy, guaranteed my other self was going through the same thing.
I sat on the couch and watched content on the television taking my mind off the conundrum for an hour or so until a new idea struck me. I hurried to the bedroom where I had been hearing my double rummaging around.
“What if we both move out? No coin toss. We both can sacrifice equally. Two lives, same person.”
As I enter, I feel a presence behind me and a stabbing pain in my lower back. I twist around but my feet trip over the shower curtain that had been placed over the carpet. Falling sideways, I hit the floor, the puncture paralysing my legs.
“Why?” I cried toward the counterpart holding the scissors. I tried to pull myself up, but my hands slipped on the blood-soaked plastic.
I look down at myself bleeding to death, reluctant to elaborate. I knew we both understood what was going on. We both have been looking for it the entire time. Fission of the timeline had indeed occurred, and with that, there had to exist since this divergence, an inevitable differentiation between the two of us.
The sandstorm above had been raging for three days with no end in sight. So intense, the winds toppled vehicles, trucks and all. They eroded away the road leading in and out of the mine, destroying the ramp, even the super trucks couldn’t scale the man-made canyon.
Workers have become sick. They had fallen weak; their skin had become yellow, not like jaundice, but splotchy yellow pigmentation. According to the doc, whatever this pestilence was, it wasn’t infectious.
“The mine’s sitting atop a massive motherlode of rare-earth metals,” said Gillian as we both descended down the deep crevasse. “Erosion didn’t create this cave .”
I noticed no smooth surface, just jagged, sharp edges. “Then what made this?”
“It’s a fracture. A lot of energy caused it. Maybe the impact of a meteor hitting the Earth all those millions of years ago.”
“Meteor?”
“This mineral lode originated from space.”
“What? Are we dealing with alien forces?”
Gillian frowned and continued rappelling further down the dark rift. The cave system was discovered by workers as they were excavating the fourth parallel tunnel. They discovered a solid tungsten deposit, lots of artefacts…
…and the cave.
When we measured the chasm with the laser, we failed to hit a bottom, so Gillian suggested we go down seventy metres, the limit of our equipment. What she was looking for, down in the darkness, I couldn’t guess. Evidence? Something to explain the sequence of events that had occurred above ground and below.
The storm.
The sickness.
The loss of communication.
Everyone’s sleep is affected by demonic nightmares.
The miners had found artefacts. Tungsten skulls the size of one’s fist.
Supernatural?
Nothing made sense…
We reach the end of the line and dangled in the darkness for a moment.
“What now?” I asked her.
“I’m going to vomit,” she answered and did so.
I pointed the flashlight at her and waited for her to recover. “Everything okay?”
“Do you feel it?”
I did. Beyond my hyper-anxiety, my intense urge to panic, I felt…
…weightlessness.
What was vertical, now seemed horizontal. “What’s happening?”
Gillian swung to the side and placed her feet on the wall. She unfastened herself and stood, perpendicular to me.
I did the same. It took me longer to achieve balance, but when I did, up and down no longer existed. “Holy shit.”
The ability to walk lessened my phobia somewhat. It gave me a sense that I could escape. But the endless darkness, which not even the industrial flashlight could breach, hampered my enforced calmness.
“Let’s press on,” said Gillian.
“Are you sure?”
“More than ever. Something’s definitely down here. Enough to distort gravity.” She then looked at me. “Plus, what choice do we have?”
Trekking proved more difficult than the rope, due to the rough, uneven passage made of pure, solid wolframite. The further we progressed, the heavier our bodies became. The cave eventually evened out and widened, spilling into a cavern. As we walked through the darkness, it felt as if we were ascending.
“Hand me a flare,” ordered Gillian. She took the candle out of my hand and ignited it. The cavern lit up, the tungsten ore reflecting the brilliant purple glow. Gillian seemed stunned by what she saw. I really couldn’t blame her.
We were atop a hill at the centre of the cavern. A temple-like structure stood at the summit. Made of wolfram, its pillared design seemed organic – biomechanical. What struck me as more insane, was the other temple above, on the cavern’s ceiling, opposite our position, separated from us by a vast black void. A great cubical chain linked both temples. This time, the mineralogist in me, recognised the iron-ferrite.
“What the hell,” gasped Gillian.
We stood at the base of the chain and looked up at the other temple. “This is way above my pay grade.”
“We have to go up,” she insisted.
“And achieve what? Whatever this is, we are not equipped to deal with it. We should go back and tell the doc…”
“What? Tell him what?”
“When the storm subsides, we could get the word out.” I pointed to the chain. “THIS requires a multi-governmental response. Me and you can’t solve this.”
“The sickness causes cannibalism.”
“What?”
“The doc didn’t want everyone to know.”
“How does he know that?”
“The B Crew have eaten most of the engineers, so yeah, Doc may be onto something with his diagnosis.”
That’s when I felt a new kind of fear, something I’d never experienced before, enough to drive me up that cube-link chain. Halfway up, I expected gravity to shift again, but that didn’t eventuate. The anti-temple was, in fact, built upside down. Spiral stairs awaited us and we both ascended quietly, without uttering a word.
We exited into another, grander temple. Biomechanical sculptures adorned the hall, which opened out into a street.
An urban street.
The sky was black, broken only by slivers of red cloud. The air was cold and putrid. Even a chemical engineer like me couldn’t place the toxicity. But the urban landscape around us, even the soundscape, was unmistakable.
Home.
“Where is this?” spoke Gillian.
“Downtown, somewhere.”
“But where?” She walked across a street bordered by factory and apartment lots, lit by the garish light coming from the lamp posts and the neon glow of a late-night grocery store. Gillian stepped towards the entrance, intending to go inside. I rushed after her and followed as she pushed through the glass, sticker-riddled door.
We found nobody at the counter so we wandered the aisles, looking at the plethora of goods on the shelves, not one label was recognisable, and none of the writing was familiar. In the freezer section, somebody was busy stacking shelves. I should say ‘something’ because this clerk was far from human. With its orange-red flaky skin, duel tiny horns protruding from its temple, another pair from its jaw, and arcing shoulders, this ugly demon paused what it was doing and looked at us with yellow eyes.
Gillian shrieked and ran, pulling me along. Enduring the same terror as she felt, I complied. We ran out into the night and fled into the shadows. The one thing that struck me about this demon was, that it seemed surprised and afraid…
The function room is modest in size, stark and somberly lit. A low hum from the air conditioner can be heard. Douglas sits at a small conference table with his arms crossed. He has a defiant expression on his face as he looks past the table at another man sitting across from him.
“I must have thought I put them there,” he answers.
Wedged in between paperwork and a laptop, Eric is seated opposite Douglas, fiercely staring at him. “I asked you to place the tongs on the food eleven minutes prior.”
Douglas raises his voice, “You told me to do something else at the time.”
“Regardless,” snaps Eric, “It would have taken two seconds to do it. How else are people gonna eat? With their hands?”
Douglas shrugs his shoulders with attitude.
Eric is taken aback. “What is that supposed to mean?” Eric mimics the shrugging of the shoulders with a deformed twisted angry face. “What is that?” He again reenacts the mockery of shrugging shoulders.
Eric’s face relaxes into calm. “So Douglas, you don’t want to work here is that it?”
Douglas straightens up from his insolent posture. “Yes, I do.”
Eric glares at him, then shouts, “No you don’t!” Once composed, he continues. “Do me a favour, can you check my forehead? Have I got fucking idiot written on it because I can’t tell? Check properly.”
Douglas stares back at Eric not moving an inch.
Eric insists, “Is it in invisible ink that only other people can see? Who the fuck do you think you are? All you seem to do is walk around the entire day with your head up your arse.”
He stops and lets the silence linger.
“How old are you?”
Douglas refrains from answering.
Eric perseveres, “How old are you, Douglas?”
Douglas is reluctant to respond, but offers, “Twenty-three.”
“How old do you think I am?”
Douglas shrugs and answers, “Thirty.”
“Forty-one. What do you reckon, pretty good for my age?”
No answer.
“Well, I think I do. Anyway, I digress. Every single day, Douglas, I have to deal with customers from all walks of life. Different cultures, and backgrounds. I have people complaining, arguing, fighting and stealing things.”
Douglas looks away.
Eric is up in his chair and continues, “Every single day I have managers increasingly shedding their responsibilities over to me. colleagues who are colluding against me, who are constantly campaigning to get rid of me. I have hours and hours’ worth of meaningless paperwork to do. Every single day.”
Eric stands and rests his hands on the table. “And on top of all that I get…” He mimics derisively, “I must have thought I put them there.” He then yells, “Can you tell me what that is?” Eric reenacts the shrugging of the shoulders, exaggerating the facial expression. “Are you some kind of moron? I don’t get paid enough to cop this rebel without a cause crap from a twenty-three-year-old punk like you.”
Eric sits back in his chair. Douglas is still, hardly breathing.
“I’ve been watching you, Douglas, for weeks. It pains me to the depth of my stomach to watch you walk. It’s not humanly possible to walk as slow as you. You’d never catch a train on time because you would be too slow to get to it.” He gets up and simulates walking very slowly, again exaggerating every move. “It is excruciating, watching you walk from one end of the lounge to the other. I have to look away to avoid getting heartburn.” Eric stops for a moment and studies Douglas who appears dazed and stunned.
“I know that you’re going to think that I’m some fuck wit as soon as you walk out of this office. You know what?
Eric waits for an answer. He gets none.
“I couldn’t care less, because if you do not improve a hundred and fifty per cent from the moment you walk out of that door you won’t be here for much longer. When I see you next I want you to be walking as fast as in the end credits on the Benny Hill show.”
Douglas snaps out of his stupor. “What’s that?”
“Benny Hill?” Eric smiles pleasantly, “70’s British comedy show, quite funny and very popular at the time. At the end of every episode, there’s a sped-up chase scene. Get it out on DVD, the best of Benny Hill, you’ll see what I’m talking about. From now on that is how I want to see you walk and work. So I’ll be watching you. I’ll be looking when you least expect it. I’ll be around monitoring everything you do. Now get out of here and give it a hundred and fifty per cent.”
Douglas stands up and sullenly walks towards the door. Just as he’s shutting the door… Eric restates, “And remember … Benny Hill.”
The door shuts.
Eric exhales and sits for a long moment in his chair. After a minute spent being distant and meditative, he shifts behind the table, exhales once more and shakes his head. Eric reaches over to his laptop, pulls it closer and begins typing into it.
He types into the keyboard… I am forwarding my resignation…
Douglas enters the bathroom. He appears distressed as he fights back tears as he stands alone with his arms crossed and looking down at his feet.
He starts to cry.
At that point, Eric also enters the bathroom to find Douglas standing there brooding. Douglas wipes his eyes with his hand but avoids looking in Eric’s direction. Eric watches Douglas for a brief moment and then goes to leave. He stops and points to Douglas. “Don’t forget, Benny Hill.”
Josh and Timothy, both in their early twenties are sitting behind the table looking insolent and defiant.
Douglas, older and much more mature, hovers above them, his anger palpable. “You can at least look at me when I’m speaking to you.”
They both instantly look up to the responsible, overworked and intimidating young manager.
“You two guys don’t want to work here is that it?”
Josh and Timothy become alert.
“Yeah,” says Josh.
“We do,” says Timothy”
Douglas glares at them and shouts, “NO, YOU DON’T.” He then composes himself, “Do me a favour, can you check my forehead? Have I got fucking idiot written on it because I can’t tell? Check properly.”
Aris Forcer sensed it in every cell in his human body.
Another dimension.
Another universe.
Ever since their ordeal with the tesseract, having survived the gatekeeper, nothing had been the same. Not physics. Not biology. Not logic. Everything was upside down, inside out. But he felt alive, and as much as things were different, many aspects of this world were the same.
Another city of scoundrels.
Another tavern of thieves.
His partner in crime, Owis Coop, didn’t seem too disorientated. A mechanoid with a badly short-circuited empathy complex, Owis appeared to revel in the new chaos. It drank its beverage of nanomide… or Psieshe as it was known… and…
How can this be? thought Aris. How could mechanoid technology exist here?
He looked over at his other companion, the Brinnerian. The slave had proven its loyalty time and again, with its magical time-sword, which fit right in this science-defying realm.
“I’m guessing our quest is over,” said Aris. “A bit of an anticlimax, I must say.”
“Anticlimax?” asked Owis. “Are you kidding me? We’re in another realm. We’ve transcended spacetime. This is heaven. We’re living in the afterlife. We’re immortal.”
“For a robot,” said Aris. “You’re kinda obsessive over your nonsensical spirituality.”
The notorious bounty hunter looked back at Aris and said, “For a human, your kind of stupid.”
“You are both wrong,” spoke the Brinnerian, something it rarely did. “This is no heaven.” It then turned to Aris. “And the climax is far from this moment.”
“What are you talking about? We’ve found the citadel,” said Aris. “…and its treasure containing a whole new universe, which basically means we can’t profit from it. We can’t go back. We’re stuck here forever.”
“You are still wrong,” said the Brinnerian.
“What is your story, slave?” asked Owis, who seemed intent on clinging onto his investment.
The Brinnerian sat with the two outlaws, and while the ultra-alien world continued on around them, it explained, “Once upon an age, a demigod called Dyzan and his disciples ventured to the Tomb Moon of Dacos in search of a sage known as Kule, a long-dead sorcerer who may be the key to overthrowing his rival, the Zenthian god Brinner, whose domain of Riathe was the richest in the Realm. Using one of Kule’s worshippers to awaken him, Dyzan convinced the sage to join his cause. With the sorcerer’s black magic at his command, Dyzan easily laid waste to Brinner’s formidable army.”
“Are you this god, Brinner?” asked Aris.
“Let me finish my story.”
“Let the slave finish,” said Owis.
The Brinnerian continued,” Eventually, Dyzan became eager to be rid of Kule, fearing that the sorcerer could well turn against him. During the battle against Brinner, Dyzan attempted to kill the sage by feeding him to his disciples, but Kule, half-eaten, escaped by conjuring up a lightning storm. With the last remains of his once powerful army, the god Brinner prepared to battle it out against Dyzan in a last-ditch effort to save Riathe. He ordered his family to evacuate to the nearest moon, and entrusted his youngest offspring with his time sword, instructing the boy to avenge his death should it occur.”
“You’re the son,” exclaimed Aris.
“Yes,” said the Brinnerian.
“What happened to your father?” asked Owis.
“With the army of Riathe destroyed, the god Brinner was captured and executed personally by Dyzan. I witnessed this, having gone back to the corpse-littered battlefield. I saw it happen.”
“How does one kill a god?” interrupted Owis.
“I’m not sure,” said the Brinnerian. “Somehow, Dyzan knew how to accomplish such a thing. Afterwards, I and what few brethren that were left, fled to the moon of Niridon, where the sage Kule had taken refuge. The ancient sorcerer conjured up a way to escape our world, into yours, where we spent the next several aeons surviving as best we could.”
“So this old sage created the tesseract?” asked Owis.
“Not exactly, the denizens of Niridon built that.”
Aris put his hand up. “Wait up. Wizards. Gods. Inter-dimensional travel. This is too much.”
“Relax. It’s the under-universe,” said Owis, then turned to the Brinnerian. “You must like our company. Any reason you’re sticking around? I’m guessing, you’re not bonded to slavery here.”
“I admit, I’m fond of you,” said the Brinnerian. “But in all truth, I’m compelled to seek vengeance for my people and…”
“And you want us to help you,” said Aris. “I don’t know about that.”
Owis grabbed his accomplice by the shoulder. “Hang on a millisecond. Since this place ain’t no heaven, maybe we should earn our keep around here. It’s obviously more dangerous than from where we came. A petty human like you won’t survive much. I say we help this demigod warrior. It pays to pick a side, right?”
Aris knew the mechanoid with the faulty cyberbrain spoke the truth. Regardless of the amazing world, he found himself in, Aris longed to return to his own reality. At least there he was an interstellar policeman, albeit a corrupt one that’s wanted across four galaxies. Still, he had allies there, connections, hideaways he knew. Here, in this exaggerated simulacrum, where monsters were monsters and physics wasn’t quite physics, he knew next to nothing. “Can you help me return to my world?”
“I can,” answered the Brinnerian.
Aris nodded.
Owis grinned. “We’re in. What’s the plan?”
The tall slender Brinnerian turned and exited the tavern. Aris and Owis rushed after their new employer, venturing out into the narrow streets of Riathe. The crowds reminded Aris of the diverse population of Polaris on Gemini Beta and Old Earth cities like Greater Tripolis. He spotted many Brinnerian lookalikes and wondered how did all these races evolve. Looking at the former slave he realises something. “Do you have a name?”
The Brinnerian didn’t look back. “Bit late for that. Besides, we’ve gotten on well without such niceties.”
“Can I ask another question,” asked Aris. “I swear, It’ll be the last. I’m getting bored asking them myself.”
“The Citadel?” asked the Brinnerian.
“Yes.”
“Riathe means fortress.”
Aris looked up at the cityscape, and beyond the skyscrapers, the swarms of rocket cars and blimps floating in the haze, he could see spires, buttresses and glimpses of a great dome. The Brinnerian kept walking, and they followed until they came upon a precinct with narrower and darker streets. Under neon lights they passed by a conglomeration of shopfronts, all providing services unrecognisable to Aris; unlike Owis, who seemed excited by everything it saw.
The Brinnerian entered a nondescript store, and both outlaws followed, trusting it to be safe. Inside, they met up with a group of yellow-coloured Brinnerians. At first, these aliens seemed confused, then shocked, gasping as if the world had cracked open, and then they fell over themselves as they rushed in to hug the Brinnerian. One in particular, a blue-skinned, less slender looking, and female fought her way to the Brinnerian and grabbed him. Aris never knew, always considering the Brinner slaves as sexless beings.
The two spoke in a language far removed from what the human could understand. Aris heard the word, ‘Aquelles’, over and over. Then the Brinnerian spoke in General Galactic, “It has been a long time. I have aged yet you, Nova, all of you, look the same as I remember.”
Aris noticed the weathered skin compared to the silky texture of the others.
“Aquelles,” said the girl Brinnerian, who appeared more humanoid, more human-like, than the surrounding males. “What’s important is that you have returned, and your timing couldn’t be more divine. A great rebellion has begun within the city of Riathe…” She then spoke in her native language.
Owis leaned over and said, “Did I hear the word rebellion?”
“Great,” said Aris. “Another war, as if being caught between three galactic superpowers fighting it out in the normal universe wasn’t enough. What is this hangout?” Aris noticed more females, scantily clad, but yellow-skinned.
“It’s a brothel,” confirmed Owis. “What’s the matter? Got some kinda human hangup over that as well?”
The ceiling grumbled, and the walls shook. The crowds dispersed in a clamorous uproar. The street outside lit up as laser beams burnt through pedestrians. Death screams echoed by the thousand.
Aquelles yelled, “Dyzan’s monstrous disciples.”
“We go up,” said Nova and her group launched towards the lifters.
Aris considered making a stand, but when he saw Owis running for it; crazy, fearless, Owis with the malfunctioning positronic brain that made him prone to ultraviolence; Aris decided he best follows the rebels.
They crammed into one of many lifters and launched, slowly. “This lifter is taking its time,” said Aris. “Owis, can you hack into it and set it to ‘Life or Death’ speed?”
“The roof is docked with rocket cycles,” said Nova, “maybe a balloon ferry.”
“They will be expecting us,” said Aquelles.
Owis huffed and said, “They won’t be expecting me.”
Aris counted the seconds, then the minutes. Holy shit, he thought. How high is this thing? He heard rumbling beyond the steel and plastic walls of the lifter, reminding him to take the safety off on his two Deemsters.
The lifter stopped and the doors opened. True to form; not wanting any competition to cramp its style, Owis jumped out with his mini-canon blazing. Outside, a horde of Dyzan’s winged disciples hovered above the rooftop, each unleashing streams of burning blue light at the rebels bursting out of the building’s four lifters. Aquelles, time-sword swinging, leapt and swiped at the low-flying targets, appearing at multiple points in the air at the same instant. Nova cajoled her brethren to charge using the cover provided by a relentless Owis. The firefight escalated when more disciples descended.
Aris rushed to the transport platform and secured the position, killing several warrior-disciples. He turned to wave the rebel over but saw Aquelles being overwhelmed by the enemy. The sword in the Brinnerian’s hand vanished as soon as a dozen disciples restrained Aquelles, zapping him into unconsciousness. Aris glimpsed the time-sword as it flashed in and out of existence as it fell down into the void.
Acknowledging the situation, Owis stepped forward to confront the disciples, but Nova grabbed and pulled it towards the platform. Aris hopped on a rocket-cycle and waited for the rebels to do the same. When Nova climbed on behind him, Aris launched the T-shaped vehicle over the edge. They fell, picking up speed until they reached terminal velocity.
“Up,” yelled Nova.
“The sword is down there.”
Nova patted him on the shoulder and braced tighter against his torso. As they approached one of the street bridges, she reached out and pointed to a flashing light surrounded by sparks. Aris, having never ridden a Riathian rocket-cycle, treated it like a standard glider, pulling back on the two hand-pedals to raise the front. They tilted upward but their speed became a deadly problem. Nova reached over and slid back the large pad between his knees, slowing the rocket-cycle to a hover. She jumped off and retrieved the half-visible, slightly intangible weapon.
“Head to the Mistralis,” she said as she climbed back on.
Aris followed her directions until they arrived over a stone tower, jutting out of an elevated precinct overlooking an urban valley. They landed among a ragtag of damaged multi-shaped rocket-cycles. Inside, Aris found the rebels arguing amongst themselves. He spotted Owis nursing a wound. “That went well,” he said.
Owis declined to respond, instead, focussed on bypassing fused ribocircuitry.
“The revolution begins,” cried Nova. The Brinnerians greeted her with a unified roar.
The rally continued in local-speak, so Aris sat with his telluric comrade. The feeling, that he was in over his head, finally sank in. “What is this place, Owis?”
“Are you asking for real, this time?”
“I’ve listened to your explanation, but I do not understand your explanation.”
Owis said, “We are in the same universe which has several sub-layers. We are in one such place.”
“Explain it to me,” insisted Aris. “Scientifically.”
“We are in a sub-universe of a hyper-universe which is part of a wider universe.”
“Not helping,” said Aris.
Owis persevered, “The prime state is kaos, it is nothing and everything at once. It is a cylindrical vortex of infinity. It has no mind, conscience or divinity. Yet, it exists and doesn’t exist, a duality of sorts. Infinite nothing means finite something, so something is created out of nothing, and nothing acts as the end of something, so something is always finite, right? Are you following this?”
“Nope.”
“This finite something is the wider universe. A thin layer that is wrapped around the vortex of kaos, slowly being destroyed by kaos. The wider universe spawns hyper-universes either by design or mathematical accident, and most of these have one or more, depending on the design or accident, sub-universes. So ‘we’re’ in such a place. This is the legendary Chthon, the genesis of all myth.”
The hours passed as Aris let the words sink into his human mind. In this timeless realm, he could only judge time by how tired he became. Eventually, the rally ended, and Nova approached them.
“We are storming the great hall of Brinstar,” she said. “My brother is imprisoned there.”
“Brother?” asked Aris, suddenly feeling somewhat differently about this rebel.
“Seriously,” said Owis. “Can homo-sapiens not view everything they experience in such a biological manner?”
Nova seemed unperplexed, “Dyzan has also invited five lords of Zenthia to the citadel. He plans on killing them.”
“Who are these lords?” asked Aris.
“They are my aunts and uncles,” she replied.
“That’s quite a family,” said Aris.
Owis stated, “Her father was a god. That means these lords are gods.”
Nova nodded.
“How does a mortal kill a god?” mused Owis. “Can a god murder another god? Is that possible?”
“These things are not known,” she said. “What is known, Dyzan has lured the Zenthians to the citadel by offering them a chance to save my brother, whom he plans on executing. The first to offer Dyson godhood will secure Aquelles’s life. Then Dyzan intends on attacking the Zenthians.”
“How do you know all this?” asked Owis. “Such plans would be military-grade secrets.”
Nova looked behind her, at an older-looking Brinnerian, who limped towards them and spoke gravely. “I know of these plans because I was the one who conjured them up. I am Gaprice, Chief Adviser to the Emperor. Once Dyzan becomes a god, he will plunge our universe into chaos. Dyzan’s paranoia knows no boundary. He fears the gods and is willing to challenge them all.”
Aris responded, “This is not just a petty revolutionary war, this is a tussle of cosmic proportions.” His appetite for adventure had suddenly waned.
“What’s the counter plan?” said Owis.
With that, Gaprice revealed the plan and soon after, Aris found himself among the insertion team on its way to the epicentre of the citadel, via the underground route. Beneath the sprawling city, a sprawling network of sewers brought them to the dungeons directly underneath the great hall of Brinstar. The lower levels presented little to no security hurdles, so part of the team set upon freeing the thousands of prisoners, but Aris pushed ahead with a small group. They reached the palace grounds finding the guard detail lacking.
“This is too easy,” said Owis.
“The palace staff are busy servicing the banquet,” said Nova, carrying her sibling’s time-sword wrapped in a Sequillium rug they purchased from a local Mistrali alchemist. “The vast majority of Dyzan’s warrior-disciples are preparing for war.”
The telluric outlaws followed Nova and three other rebels deeper into the palace, arriving at a chamber with an oval arena surrounded by vast arches. In the centre, a circular dining table boasted over a hundred guests and servants, mostly the entourage of the five eminences distinguishable by their stature and an air of importance. At the apex, sat an imposing figure. Pompously uniformed and pontifical, Dyzan appeared poised to make a speech, constantly looking upward.
Aris looked up and saw a biomechanical form hanging from the dome, and spread-eagled within its five tremendous tentacles, a humanoid.
Aquelles.
“That’s Dyzan’s secret weapon,” said Nova. “A Gigathon.”
Aris stepped forward. “I’ll go up and attempt to free your brother. Nova, take Owis as close as you can to this Dyzan dude. The rest of you, take up positions near the lords, get the word out of Dyzan’s treachery.”
Owis grabbed him by the shoulder. “This doesn’t feel right. It is a set-up. We’re being used to distract these Zenthian beings.”
“Either way,” said Aris. “Once we free our Brinnerian friend, all chthonic hell will break loose. Nova, pass me the time-sword.”
Nova did so, nodded and then pulled Owis away, towards the crowd. The other rebels scattered, leaving Aris to wander the colonnades alone. He discovered a grand spiral of stone stairs and climbed them, all the way until he ascended to the top of the great arches.
“Behold the son of Brinner,” bellowed a voice below.
Aris made his way to the edge and for the first time could measure the true vastness of the monstrous, majestic Gigathon. When two giant tendrils parted, he spotted Aquelles, embedded in the Gigathon’s spiky skin. Every inch of its epidermis grew thousands of black crystalline needles, each stabbing out at anything that came into contact with it. Aquelles bled but was still alive, and conscious.
“Isn’t slavery so much better?” called out Aris.
Aquelles looked at him with bloodshot eyes and smiled. Uncloaking the time-sword, Aris held it out to him.
“All I ask,” echoed Dyzan’s voice. “Is to be your equal.”
“Come on,” said Aris. He heard a commotion below. He saw the palace guard swarm in and capture Nova. Aquelles saw it too and struggled against the tendrils. Aris wondered why Owis had not unleashed yet.
The Gigathon became more active.
“This selfishness will be your doom,” shouted Dyzan. “Be stubborn. Let the children of Brinner perish. Your fate awaits you.”
Aquelles growled, his pain visible as every muscle in his body rippled.
Below, Aris could see the Zenthian lords prepare to square off with a horde of warrior-disciples, who were already under attack by a ragtag of armed rebels and freed prisoners. Above him, two more Gigathons emerged. With the time-sword growing heavy in his hand, Aris wondered where in the multiverse had Owis gone to.
Aquelles pulled his bloodied arm free from the Gigathon’s grasp and reached out. Aris swung and tossed the ancient weapon forward. It was a weak throw; it began to tumble… but Aquelles snatched it out of the air, stabbing the Gigathon with it, puncturing its tough, bristly flesh a hundred times in the same second.
“Yes, a slave,” answered Owis, bemused why the Earthman’s facial features had suddenly shrivelled up.
“Why in Gaia’s name did you do that?” asked the renegade cop from the human-infested Milky Way.
Owis thought it obvious, but explained, “This is the slave capital of the Dark Galaxy.”
“And?”
“The Kocubani’s last words,” said Owis, drinking. “It mentioned slavery, right?”
Aris replied, “The deceased Kocubani pointed us to Brinner’s Moon. Doesn’t exactly specify anything about owning a slave.” The human hadn’t touched his beverage. He seemed genuinely outraged.
Owis uttered, “Slave I have been and shall remain, To a cruel tyrant, I’m tied with invisible chains, Yet always I put on the same brave face, Forever a slave, Forever I gaze.”
The Earthman sat at a bench, wedged in a booth overlooking the rail terminex of Brinner’s largest city, Llegamos. In seven megahours, the sun will rise and the entire city’s population will either migrate deeper underground or take the railships to escape the harsh radiation from the red-dwarf star, Obirus.
Aris asked, “Can this slave interpret it better? Does it speak?”
Owis looked at the slender, dark mauve humanoid. He’d seen these in every galaxy he’d ever visited. Reliable and resourceful, their loyal nature was legendary.
“No,” said Owis. The old bounty hunter looked up at the sky through the weathered glass. The trio of interstellar cruisers was shining brightly as they converged over their location. “If war breaks out between them, we will lose all chance of finding the citadel.”
Aris finally downed his drink and said, “We could be on the wrong planet.”
“Heaviest of realms, is what that Kocubani said.” Owis had no doubts. Brinner had the highest habitable gravity in the known Dark Galaxy.
Aris glared at the bounty hunter. “Before you shot it.”
The bounty hunter looked at the slave and stated, “The mere mention of slavery can only bring us here.”
“That doesn’t really help us.”
“Not my fault the Kocubani didn’t elaborate,” said Owis.
“You killed it, so yes, it kinda is your fault.”
“It was gonna kill us.” Owis wished the human would drop it. “We should leave. Between the coming dawn and the firestorm brewing above, our window of opportunity to find the citadel is closing fast.”
“That’s if the myth is real,” said Aris as he stood up and picked up his exo-suit. “A low-class railship is outbound in an hour. It’s affordable, so we should buy passage and scavenge the outskirts for more clues.”
The Brinnerian indigene watched the two outlaws gather their gear. The trio exited the skybar and rode the western platform down to the crowded Terminex. On 1.708g Brinner, hundreds of steel tracks crisscross the moon’s equator, converging at the main spaceport. Railships, each powered by a spectrum of energy sources, resupplied and repopulated, then headed west, towards the endless night, until a Brinnerian year later, reentered the Central Terminex from the east.
“Are you thinking of keeping this slave?” asked Aris.
“I paid for it.” Owis studied the thin Brinnerian. It’s only possession- a staff strapped to its back. Metallic, yet transparent, it shimmered under the Llegamos city lights. It also quivered, unnaturally.
Aris noticed it too. “Never seen that before.”
“This region of the Dark Galaxy is a relic hunter’s dream. I tell you, the Citadel is real.”
“Can it do anything we can use?”
“It’s from a technical caste,” said Owis, elated that the human had dropped its arcane bias towards slavery. “Proficient in Nestor Class mechanics and Quantelectronics.”
Owis stepped onto the next platform. Aris and the slave followed. Cheaper than all the other fares, the 224 Eclipse Line was also slower; catching the shadow of Obirus B as it meandered across the red desert.
“What if we’re wrong?” asked Aris. “There’s nothing on the Genixo records that even resembles a citadel.”
“We don’t know what it is,” said Owis as they boarded the town-sized railship. “It’s older than the universe. It could be anything.” They paid for crate-sized accommodation and got comfortable inside. Owis, even though a mechalogue and didn’t require sleep, took a long while to get into a state of slumber. It found it a useful meditational exercise, but this time, memories of past escapades, non-stop treachery, and near-death experiences haunted it.
“Wake up,” yelled Aris. “Sodality troopers have found us.”
The rear of the stationary railship was smouldering metal. “Where are they?” Owis poised for action.
Aris pulled at their gear. “Troopers come. Troopers gone. Must get going. Get into your exo-suit.”
“On foot, we won’t survive,” reasoned Owis. “The eclipse will outpace us.”
“There’s another railway less than fifty clicks across the desert.”
“Where’s the slave?”
“Waiting for us down below.”
The two outlaws climbed down to the lower decks. Panicked residents scrambled towards the front assisted by the railship’s guards. Upon reaching the lowest platform, a brigand blocked them from disembarking. Resentful for being left out of the recent carnage, Owis killed them. After jumping onto the sand, they both trekked out into the open and found the slave waiting on a hilltop.
“Why doesn’t it escape?” asked Aris.
“They are a synergetic race,” explained Owis. “Slavery is actually a misnomer.”
Aris lead the march out into the desert, under the eclipse of a gas planet; a great emerald ring, the edges glowing green as the light passed through its torrid atmosphere. Dawn was coming. In a short megahour, hell would arrive.
They entered a black leafless forest. Owis knew life festered all around, hibernetic, cyclic and prolific. Sunrise brought on the long sleep, thus the indigenous ecosystem had adapted to the local celestial power play perfectly.
“How could any civilisation arise in such a place?” asked Aris.
“Brinnerians live in the polar regions,” explained Owis. “According to the Genixo records, that region is most suitable for spontaneous sentient progression.”
“And yet,” spoke the slave, its voice as clear as any basic Dark Galaxian dialect. “We are not from this world.”
The two outlaws froze, unable to speak back to it.
The slave pointed to the gas giant. “Obirus means tyrant, in a language older than time.”
For Owis, the answer to the riddle finally seemed to make sense.
Aris seemed to realise this too. “Brinner isn’t tidally locked.”
“But that moon is,” said Owis, pointing to a shining star. However, the jubilation was short-lived. The air screamed, and sporadic lights sent the tree shadows running as ten Trinary drop-ships pounded into the ground. Within seconds, ten squadrons of drones burst from the attack pods and surrounded them, giving the two outlaws and the Brinnerian little scope of a practical defence.
“This doesn’t look good,” stated Aris.
The slender slave reached for the staff and launched at the belligerents. It swung it like a sword and cut one drone in half. At the same instant, the same weapon appeared in four different locations and chopped up a quartet of drones. By the time the enemy unleashed a dozen shots, the slave had slashed its way to wiping out the Trinary detachment.
Owis recognised the time sword. He looked over at Aris and, with a grin wider than Obirus, said, “Do you believe in myths now?”
