by Paul Anlee
Both of his selves shared a common sense of frustration and powerlessness.
I can’t do anything but watch and wait. That seems to have been my fate ever since I met Darak. Would I have been better off never knowing the universe is filled with things beyond my paltry education, knowledge that I’ll never grasp? Would I have felt more secure had I never witnessed the power of the Almighty? Correction, the Almighties? Oh, to go back to simpler times when my biggest worry was ensuring proper obeisance to the proscribed prayers!
He was tired of being little more than a footnote, a plaything, an insignificant speck of dust caught in a hurricane of Godly intent. He made a sour face as the image rose in his mind.
There are too many Gods in the universe—he thought as he watched the battle progress. Even one God is too many.
The blasphemous conclusion startled him.
Less than a year ago, I never would’ve conceived of such a thought. I’ve changed a lot—grown a lot—since my early days as a monk.
His easy acceptance of that growth scared and excited him.
What must the billions of Alum’s People be thinking right now as they watch this battle of Gods in Heaven play out? Through my Familiar, no less, another foreign concept to most of them! How are they interpreting what they see? What meaning will they ascribe? How will they be changed by all of this?
Based on what he’d seen and knew, he guessed half of the People would view this battle as a brave attempt to fulfill the promise of freedom and novelty that they’d only recently begun to experience. The other half would see it as a heretical leap into a state of uncertainty that they’d never desired.
They’re as much motes as I am—Stralasi thought. Insignificant specks. Their own God—my own God—announced that their votes were meaningless. That has to hurt. But why should a God listen to the bleating of His sheep? In the end, a God has the power to impose His will on His People. Alum’s Divine Plan and the way He ignored the voice of the People proved that.
What will happen to the People if Darak wins? If Alum no longer governs the Realm? Though he had the power of a God, Darak never chose to rule, at least, not in this universe.
Was it possible to be a God and not desire a Realm or worshippers?
Possible, yes. But not common. One in eight, maybe. Out of Darak, Alum, and every one of the Gods that Darak called “the Six,” only Darak had chosen a path that didn’t place him at the top of a personal empire.
What if there were no lesser beings to cajole, extort, or force into worship?—he wondered. What if we were all equal?
What if there aren’t too many Gods, but too few?
He tried to imagine a universe in which everyone was a God.
He attached a feed directly into the QUEECH comm channel that linked him with the billions of spectators in the Realm.
“Question: If you could be a God yourself, would you?” he broadcast. “Not to rule over others but to live freely, to associate freely with others, to share, to guide, to travel, to learn, and so on. Would you wish to be elevated?”
Millions of questions flooded back from the observers, seeking clarification of the parameters of his poll. He wrote himself a quick subroutine to classify the queries.
“Would it be open to all? Would I become immortal? Would I have to fight or compete with other Gods? How many Gods could there be? Would I have to/get to have my own universe?”
Even with the classification program, Stralasi felt overwhelmed by the questions.
I don’t know what it’s like to be a God, only to travel with one—he thought.
Sipping on a coffee in the climate-controlled comfort of the Alumitum habitat, he decided to forward the question to one who would know.
“Uh, Darian?” he said.
Darian looked up from pretending to play with icons on the tabletop, while he monitored his Spyder’s progress inside Alum’s QUEECH device.
“Yes?”
“I know you’re busy with the Spyders but do you have a sec?”
“Sure. I’m just waiting for the last one to report in.”
“I sent a poll to Darak’s observers, the judges, and I need some insight to respond to some of their questions.”
“A poll? What kind of poll?”
“I asked if they’d like to be Gods, all of them, if they could.”
“What? If anything, I’d think this fight with Alum would convince you godhood is dangerous.”
“That’s an understatement. But wasn’t it more dangerous when Alum was the only God? When He did whatever He pleased, unopposed? Wasn’t that what allowed Him to activate His Divine Plan in the first place?”
Darian frowned. “Yeah, okay. You have a point.”
“Okay, so what’s the optimal number of Gods to have in the universe?”
“Oh, ho! We’re into impossible questions, now, are we?” Darian laughed.
“Seriously,” Stralasi replied. “Obviously, one is not enough. No restraints. Two sounds like a recipe for constant competition and battle for supremacy. Eight or ten doesn’t seem much better.”
He gulped noisily then continued.
“So what about trillions? I mean, it’s just a question. A thought experiment, really. But…what do you think? Does it sound utterly absurd? Imagine trillions and trillions of beings, all with the power to create their own universes and alter the laws of reality. How would that look?”
Darian ran his hand through his hair.
“Wow. Well, there’s certainly something to be said for safety in numbers. Primitive humans armed with nothing but a sword and their skill were more or less equal. Until someone with greater tools or skills came along.”
“That’s what I’d be worried about,” Stralasi said. “The Gods I’ve known all seemed hungry for competition. They wanted to be the only one in charge.”
“You’re discounting the tens of millions of years of peace they brought before Alum went crazy,” Darian pointed out. “Had He not desired to rule everything and, later, to remake everything, there would’ve been no conflict.”
“Do you think conflict is inevitable?” Stralasi asked.
“I think the root of conflict is competition,” Darian suggested. “Historically, at least for humans, that meant competition for resources, land, food, water, energy, minerals, cheap labor, and that sort of thing. On Eso-La, they developed a society that has no real need for competition. Look at the Esu. They’re more or less all equal, and they’re peaceful and cooperative.”
“Alum’s Realm had little need for competition,” Stralasi pointed out. “Except for fun, of course. But can a free people also be free of the drive to compete?”
“Free people? Maybe not,” Darian replied. “Free Gods, though, possibly. If you could rule out the kind of megalomania we saw in Alum, why not? Nothing restricts us from the resources we need. There’s no real need to rule over others to ensure our own security. We can go wherever we want, and we can do whatever we want. We can make our own reality if the present one doesn’t suit us.”
“How would we restrain unbridled ambition? The kind with singular purpose like Alum has?”
Darian raised an eyebrow. “The kind that’s incompatible with everything else in existence in this universe? Or in the multiverse, for that matter?”
“Yes. If the universe were filled with trillions and trillions of Alums, how could it ever be safe?”
“Safe?” Darian laughed. “Be careful you don’t fall into that trap. That drive for everything to feel safe is Alum’s biggest flaw. He focuses on what’s safe and predictable for Him, not for everyone else. He craves certainty and security—to a fault. He’s willing to sacrifice everything in pursuit of it. He sees no problem squandering the endless, chaotic, probabilistic possibilities of an unrestrained universe to achieve His dream.”
“Hmm,” Stralasi replied. “How can He be so smart and not see that safe is just a perception, and an unreliable one at that?”
Instead of answering, Darian stood up an
d paced the length of the fenced-off patio, some dozen paces, and back. Deep in thought, he repeated the action, once with his hands clasped at his chin and index fingers steepled to his lips, and a couple more times with his hands clasped behind his back.
While he silently paced, Stralasi polled the observers among the People. They’d been listening to his conversation with Darian. The few remaining questions were ones Stralasi could easily field himself.
Darian stopped abruptly. A mischievous smile lit up his face.
“Brother, you’ve surprised me,” he said. “If I had time to consult with Darak, I’m sure he’d echo that sentiment. Your proposal is impossible to model. It’s impossible to predict. And that, my friend, is why it could be the best answer of all.”
“What proposal? I made no proposal,” Stralasi grumbled.
“That’s why it’s so perfect,” Darian said. “Don’t you see?”
“No, I don’t. Not at all,” Stralasi answered, shifting from confusion to mounting irritation. “Have you lost your mind?”
“Only once, but that’s an old story now. Look, hear me out. Your proposal begins with an open-ended question, whose answer leads to an explosion of possibilities; it’s the perfect counter-solution to Alum’s vision.
“Imagine endless novelty, endless possibility,” Darian held open his arms as if holding the wondrous explosion of potential between them. “And it’s all available with a single stroke. A gift, easily given.”
“What do you mean?” Stralasi asked.
“This,” Darian said.
He opened his mind and poured knowledge through Stralasi’s link and out into the Realm. The knowledge of reality, of how and why the multiverse was as it was, flew outward into the prepared minds of the billions of listening judges throughout Human and Cybrid space.
As it passed through the monk, it filled him as well and, in that moment, he finally understood everything: the laws of physics, chemistry, biology, mathematics, all kinds of information.
With it came the knowledge of how to weave and project reality-altering RAF fields directly from their minds.
Oh!—Stralasi thought. That’s what makes nature work. And he saw the infinite possibilities of other natures, of other universes latent in the probabilities of the Chaos.
“How will we use this?” they cried. “How can we defeat Alum’s Divine Plan with this?”
“Kill Him!” some answered. “Imprison Him,” others said. “Destroy His Deplosion Array! Banish Him to His Heaven!”
As Darian listened to the clamor relayed back to him through Stralasi, an image came to mind. It was an ancient image, one from his youth.
He remembered watching Greg and Kathy perform an exercise in a stone-floored courtyard surrounded by white cement walls, bamboo, and water-shaped rocks. The smooth motions of their hands traced a symbol in the air, a symbol of the good inherent in evil, and the evil inherent in good, of dark transitioning into light and vice versa, of potential becoming reality.
Yin and Yang—he remembered. The ultimate symbol of potential and reality. A symbol of meeting hard with soft, of engaging push with pull, of diffusing aggression with tranquility or retreat.
And the answer revealed itself to him.
* * *
The Spyder finally reached the optoelectronic chip at the far end of the printed circuit board. The interface circuitry that enabled Alum’s distributed consciousness to function as an integral being lay exposed.
The Spyder’s eight delicate legs wrapped themselves around a set of predetermined conductive posts that made the connections between the QUEECH comm chip and other circuitry. Five legs went to metallic posts on the chip and three shunted signals to bypass an encryption integrity detector.
It brought all eight of its conductive pads in contact with the targets, loaded the handshake virus, and ended its own brief life by fusing internal breakers to complete the circuit, essentially soldering its microscopic QUEECH comm unit into place between the local node and Alum’s greater intergalactic mind.
Sitting across from Brother Stralasi at a table outside of the café, Darian received the first of Alum’s thoughts through the Spyder’s QUEECH and smiled.
“We’re in,” he said.
48
It had been a long time since the Living God felt fear. Not since the Aelu Wars had He considered that He might not prevail in a conflict. But Darak, Darya, and Darian were proving to be annoyingly formidable opponents.
Attacking Me on three fronts as the Deplosion Array is on the verge of fulfilling the Divine Plan! Such a daring strategy that I can’t help but admire it, even in the hands of an enemy—He thought with a tiny bit of His vastly distributed mind.
The clumsy frontal attack by the five Gods had been nowhere near as elegant or as threatening as what He now faced. The Five had naively brought the battle to His territory, His long-held stronghold in the cradle of humanity.
His thousands of nodes in the Origin system had set numerous reality-distorting mines in the paths of the Gods. Thinking they were the ones springing the surprise attack, the Five had been ill-prepared to deal with the surprises that greeted them in the space near Sol. They died within seconds of beginning their battle.
Thanks to Raytansoh. He gave a moment of thought to the God, now dead, who had betrayed his five allies and warned Alum of their imminent attack.
Allies? What a thought! Raytansoh should’ve known that true alliances are impossible among Gods.
He didn’t regret that Darak had killed Raytansoh.
It saves Me from having to deal with that nuisance at some later time.
And it made coordinating His own defense and counterattacks that much simpler. Not that there was anything simple about this battle or the rest of this long war.
Darya’s Cybrid forces, coupled with the Esu Familiars and those remnants of the cursed Aelu, were having alarming success against the Angel and Archangel defenses.
Two-point-seven percent of the array gone! Not significant to the deplosion rate but worrisome, nonetheless.
After previous losses to the array—an unfortunate result of Darya’s scheming—He’d reengineered the structure with twenty-percent overcapacity. Small losses wouldn’t slow His schedule for altering all of reality. He only had to keep eighty percent of the array functioning for five more days and victory would be His.
In just five more days, deplosion will be irreversible.
My defense forces should be able to hold off the rebels for that long, especially with a little help from My subtle interventions.
He’d equipped many of the newest array elements with minor nodes capable of projecting simple RAF fields to distort time dilation in their vicinity. It was just enough to give the Archangels a defensive advantage against direct attacks on the elements. That tweak alone had hindered the enemy’s destructive successes for many minutes.
And it had been working fine until Darya decided to get directly involved.
Foolish Cybrid, if only she’d been content to just interfere with the Archangels, that actually would’ve worked better against me. I would’ve had a much harder time countering her strength out there.
But she just couldn’t contain her curiosity. She had to investigate, and that would be her undoing.
When Darya materialized inside one of His array element asteroids, He’d been elated. He’d thrown a complex attack at her, expecting a quick victory. To His surprise, the Cybrid had not only parried but managed to incapacitate one of His nodes. He’d howled at the pain of losing even a single mind, shifted out the useless node, and replaced it with two more. Infuriated, He’d redoubled His attacks, and pushed with deadly determination against her defenses.
Back in Heaven, the four-fold being that was Darak had figured out the reality parameters of Alum’s unique Creation and was threatening His very heart, the Core of Heaven.
Despite being only four relatively insubstantial minds against Alum’s behemoth Heavenly CPPU—a mind that filled the cent
er of that universe—Darak was proving to be a capable adversary. Alum supplemented His Heavenly strength by shifting in nodes from the outside universe.
He threw everything He had at Darak’s four manifestations: the man-God, the rebel Angel, the unexpected Aelu, and the mysterious Cybrid. The four fought as one being, deflecting or absorbing Alum’s attacks, and unleashing their own damage on the Living God.
No matter what, Heaven must not fall. I’ve moved too much of Me into Heaven’s Core in preparation for the end of the external multiverse.
One by one, they destroyed Alum’s imported nodes or made them useless by combined projected RAF fields and blasts from strange realities. The Living God tossed His spent nodes into the Chaos and replaced them with new ones.
As He did, entire planets in the universe outside of Heaven found themselves suddenly cut off from communication with their God. Starsteps failed, prayers went unanswered, and cities went dark as Alum’s nodes disconnected from local resource coordination and joined the war in Heaven.
Despite the intensity of the other attacks, there was one other issue, seemingly minor but puzzling, that troubled the Living God. He diverted a tiny fraction of His attention for a closer look at what Darian Leigh was doing in the Alumitum. Had Darian’s appearance in the home of Alum’s own Church been intended as a distraction from the battles in Heaven and near the Deplosion Array?
Had the sudden blast from the Angel’s sword been a deliberate near-miss or a serious attempt to disrupt Alum’s node network?
Disabling My Alumitum node would have no greater impact than any other single node—Alum thought. Did they not know this? How could they not?
Wheels within wheels within wheels. Overlapping complexities.
He’d checked on His Alumitum node and its QUEECH comm machinery. Everything had been normal. There’d been no incursion, aside from the interesting coincidence of the wasps.
Darian was still somewhere in the Alumitum, though He couldn’t find him at the moment. No matter—He thought. I’ll set Alumitum Angels to look for him.