Chapter 9: blInk
Words flowed onto the page like a clear crystal stream; each letter crisp and beautiful and yet unsullied by critic or reader, so fluid that the writer himself knew not if the next word would be adjective, or noun, or odd preposition. Instinct dictated his undulating scrawl, much more so than either premeditation, afterthought, or even his muse – the half empty bottle of bourbon perched precariously at the edge of his desk, where a maligned sneeze might just send it careening down to the ill-kempt floor; now studded with discarded papers and mostly unread bills.
His name was Michael J. Tarst; or at least he was pretty sure it was. The drink scrambled his thoughts sometimes – that was what the doctors said anyway. He had his own ideas... though sharing them would surely wind up with a trip to somewhere even worse than AA meetings. Truth be told, though, the poison did not help. He swore to quit – after this bottle. Or the next. Maybe.
Blindly grasping at the desk, for he refused to take his eyes from the dull glow of his ancient monitor, his hands closed around the medallion, and he ran his fingers across the embossed surface, envisioning the words in his sleep-blurred mind’s eye.
“Joseph Pulitzer…” his mouth formed the words, and though his tongue found familiarity, it lacked recognition. His fingers moved higher, finding the rounded corner of a deep gouge once made by heavily wielded pen knife. Tracing the “J” from the bottom tip up, and leaping over to the angle of the “T” in Tarst, he found some relief that he had not entirely lost his mind yet. Michael dropped the disc unceremoniously back to his deck, where it wobbled to a stop – in easy reach for the next time his sanity came into question.
The prize itself vexed him, but critics heralded him as the decade’s master of historical fiction; a talent and vision unseen before and replete with vivid tales and detailed storylines that captured not only the spirit of the age but the lives and souls and banalities therein.
Only he and his late wife knew the truth. What they claimed was brilliant historical fiction was not fiction at all; but rather the culmination of hundreds of lives of memories and experiences. Each haunted him, a poltergeist that on bad days no amount of liquor could hold at bay. Today was a really bad day, and the words revealed its puzzle all too slowly.
Perhaps it was the unseasonal storm raging outside. Scientists and reporters filled the news, claiming that some environmental tipping point had been reached, sending the Earth into a death spiral – and an equal number of critics claimed it was a cyclic event repeating roughly ever 413 and one half years and citing statistics and numbers that were far more fictional than anything that he had ever written. He had grown used to the false prophets; they were a constant throughout his own histories and none thus far had proven true.
The thought drove him to cast his eyes away from the novel he was writing, and down at his desk at last. Several books graced its surface: The Bhagivad Gita, a treatise on the Vedic Sages, a novel about ancient China called “The Romance of the Three Kingdoms”. When people asked how long he had been a writer, and he replied, “Always,” he did not mean it in the figurative sense – but rather quite literally. Lifetime after lifetime, his soul was as bound to the pen as it was to the world in which it dwelled.
Of all Ascended, Tarst believed that he remembered the most of what he once was; and lived, cursed and burdens by the culminated mistakes of previous lives.
A pair of Bibles, too, caught his attention. Though they were far from the original, he kept the twins to remind himself of what he had done by choosing to pen the tale of Christ. Twice. It was, at best, a failed attempt to conceal the truth that had accumulated in over a thousand years of wars, suffering, and chaos; an homage of sorts. “The path to Hell is paved with good intentions,” he growled low under his breath. His cell phone lay atop the mini tower, silent and dark.
At its worst… Tarston reached for his bottle to drown the idea before it could consume him with despair yet again. His wife, Nancy, had always understood. She was not Ascended but that did not matter – she believed in him, supported him. When she passed, his world began to spiral out of control. First the bottle, and then the full realization of his nature, and now the whole damned world was slipping across the cusp.
He snarled at the TV, which was still prattling on about the so-called “New War” that had broken out just days ago in the Middle East. With America in a state of apoplexy from its financial, educational, and social collapse, Israel suddenly found itself without allies and surrounded by the wolves.
Dreary old England found itself in little better shape; his homeland had tied itself so firmly to its former colony that as the Yanks went down, they brought the Queen’s country with it. The talking heads still lamented the loss, and insisted the future would be bright but Tarst knew the truth – the sun had already set in the West. It would rise again, someday, if they were all around to see it.
Looking outside, to where the driving snow had changed its mind yet again into a needle-like rain, Weston doubted such opportunity would present itself.
A buzzing distracted him from those dark thoughts, and he reached over to pick up his phone – managing to knock the Bibles over, at last, in the process. They hit the ground with a thud.
He checked the caller ID, and muttered under his breath, “Speak of the Devil,” before snapping open the phone.
“Miss Kishida” he exhaled at the voice.
The voice on the other side sighed, “Just Mirai,” she said in her lilting accent. “Tarston-san,” she added.
“Okay, okay. Graces, you win Mirai,” he declared – the honorific made him feel far too old for his age; though just last month he had hit 40 like a train. “Thank God you called -- I've been trying to reach you all day.”
“Based on your predictions, I successfully made contact with the target,” she said. "And in the town, cells don't work. Thanks for sending me out to the pit of nowhere, by the way," she admonished.
Edged relief flooded through his tired muscles. Using his centuries of experience, Tarston theorized that Ascendency was far more like a mathematical formula than random divine “inspiration” – though it was an inexact science.
“You need to get him out of there,” he warned. "I'm sending you copy of what I just divined today, it's not good."
"Order?" Mirai asked -- the girl's instincts had grown only sharper in the years since he had found her.
Tarst sucked in his breath, “Alyrin Delling,” he whispered. His hands shakily poured another shot of bourbon. Soon, he’d have to switch to the whiskey. Or something stronger. His soul was too old for this, he grumbled to himself.
He swigged back the glass before Mirai could speak, letting the amber fire ignite his throat, and through the clear bottom of the glass he could see the freak storm outside. The pieces suddenly fell into place, and his fingers beat out a rhythm on the keyboard -- telling the story that history concealed.
As he scanned over his newest piece, the words turned his tongue to lead, “She's found you.” His hand knocked the shot glass over – it caught the edge of the desk and shattered spectacularly into a thousand tiny shards. He gasped, “Get the Keystone and get out of Megid now!”
"Too late," Mirai added something unintelligible in her own language before adding, "God damned angels."
Nancy's photograph, the only thing he had managed to salvage from the fire that stole her from him, watched sadly as he nodded absently into the receiver. “Each piece a puzzle, each puzzle a soul,” he whispered into the phone. “Don’t ask me what it means, the answer is one of the few that I have no memory of.”
Outside, a neighborhood cat screeched in surprise before falling suddenly and terribly silent.
“The Sword lies between Here and There,” he whispered into the phone as quickly as he could, a memory passed down from memories as his free hand reached again for the bottle, before he remembered his lamentably broken glass. Instead it found the photo frame; Weston tilted his wife down so she would not see.
He heard the footsteps, thudding along the deck outside.
“And in Darkness lay the future King,” Tarst recited the poem he had spent centuries crafting, never finding an appropriate ending. Mirai’s shouted questions formed only a muted buzzing at the back of his mind. He pulled back his main drawer and reached deep inside with a trembling hand. From its depths he withdrew an ancient pearl-handled revolver.
His outer door gave way with a crash and shouted commands.
“In times like these may dragons rise,” he finished and paused, considering the poem he had dedicated his existence to perfecting. Mirai’s voice was distant now, a buzz in the back of his brain.
Tarst leveled his weapon at the door, pulling back on the hammer slowly. He lowered the phone to his desk, setting it down ceremonially. His lifetimes' legacy complete, Michael J. Tarst regretted only two things: that he would not be able to archive this piece of history, and that he would not be able to see his wife in the vast and impermeable beyond.
The door to his study splintered in deafening explosion, revealing the black uniforms emblazoned with bronze crosses -- the assassins Ascended called Shadow Soul.
In times like these,” he amended his magnum opus fiercely as he opened fire, “even poets must draw the sword!”
F-Infinity Saga Canto I Page 10