Mobius

by Vincent Vale

  I spit at the Fume. “You’ve won! This universe is yours! Just tell me why you needed Allienora!”

  “With pleasure,” said the Fume. “I needed her to lure you here.”

  “Why!” I screamed. “My part in your grand design is over. Wasn’t I the catalyst for Nara-Narayana’s evolution? Didn’t I fulfill your needs when I was implanted with a biolinguistic lobe?”

  “You’re more important to my plan than you think.”

  “You still need me?” I said. “For what?”

  “When we spoke on the Guardian Sphere, it was essential you accomplished two things to ensure the progress of my plans. First, I needed you to get closer to Nara-Narayana, since the potency of my essence within you would only catalyze her evolution if you were within the Brahman Sprawl. After this was accomplished, I needed you to return to one of my outpocketings. You see, Theron, you’re a vital element in my plan to absorb this universe’s energies once they’re evolved. You’re the hybridization of my energies and Nara-Narayana’s energies. I needed you here, because you’re the conduit by which I’ll be able to freely move into this universe and absorb Nara-Narayana’s transcendental energies.”

  “How did you anticipate our travels so precisely? If we hadn’t found the Prophets, I would’ve never been linked to Nara-Narayana, thus I would’ve never found Allienora.”

  “The human mind is predictable and easily influenced. From the beginning, I left you a trail of breadcrumbs, and you gobbled them up like a greedy mouse. If you recall, in Fandoral’s quarters on the Guardian Sphere, I had my soldiers leave that homunculus Stimple alive, for I knew he’d lead you to the training facility of the Guardian Army, where you encountered JarNay, who was also left alive by my soldiers.”

  “And then there was Morion,” I said. “I had wondered how he defeated the goliath beast guarding JarNay.”

  “Yes, Morion was at your side the whole time, acting the part and reporting back to me on the progress of your journey.”

  “And you knew that JarNay could lead us to the Guardian Fanbert, who in turn could lead us to the Prophets.”

  “Precisely,” said the Fume, inclining his nose to a boastful angle. “And the Prophets gave you the means to communicate directly with Nara-Narayana. At that point, I was counting on love, that human condition that weakens the mind so the body will bend in irrational directions. Once you linked with Nara-Narayana, who is connected to every soul in the Brahman Sprawl, I knew your love for Allienora would take you to her.”

  “And what now?” asked Orsteen.

  “We wait for the wake of Nara-Narayana’s evolution. Once it reaches my outpocketings, all will be done. This universe will be mine for the taking.”

  I looked to the sky. “Nara-Narayana believes you’ll be powerless to overtake her. She thinks you underestimate her mastery of this universe.”

  “She’s just a child, drunk with a power she doesn’t know how to wield.”

  “You’ve orchestrated your plans flawlessly,” I said, gazing to Allienora in the distance. “Will you grant me one last request before the end?”

  “I’ll consider it. Speak on.”

  “Let me say goodbye to Allienora, before we’re all sucked into your continuum of thought.”

  “A harmless request. I’ll allow it.” The Fume caused Allienora and the stone altar to glide through the air until she came to be in front of me.

  I held my breath in horror. My sweet. My love.

  Below me lay the ruins of a once beautiful and delicate woman. Insects swarmed like an aura around her. I swatted them away desperately. Her face, although untouched, was left in a contorted expression of pain. I wept.

  “Why?”

  “It was necessary that her thoughts travel with intensity into her biolinguistic lobe, so your connection to her wouldn’t diminish. I had to be certain you could locate her.” The Fume ran his fingers through Allienora’s soft golden hair. “I hate to flaunt my own accomplishments, but I’ve brought ‘agony’ to a whole new height of meaning.”

  Above Allienora’s head, I discovered a repugnant and inhuman organ. It pulsed and quivered with an unsettling rhythm. It was connected to her head by a network of nano-fibers. What was its purpose? At that moment, as I looked into Allienora’s dead eyes, she blinked.

  “She lives!” I exclaimed. “What is this? How is this possible?”

  “Of course she lives. This is the genius of my work.” The Fume gently caressed the organ above her head. “I created this organ to keep her brain and nervous system alive, so I could torture her beyond her body’s breaking point. Have no fear—her mind will soon join her body in death. You look unwell, Theron. Don’t let hate spoil your experience of these momentous events.”

  My shock turned to absolute sadness. I’ve lost her again. I reached into my pocket and removed the infinity spiral pendant. I placed it at her neck.

  “This is yours, my dear... it’s always been yours... from the very beginning.”

  I looked up from my one true love and into the Fume’s eyes. Within me, a dark emotion was born—it was fast to poison all others. But with the darkness came control, power, and determination.

  “You’ve taken that which is most dear to me, and from my loss, I’ve come to accept the fate that everyone in this universe will be assimilated into a greater conscious realm. However, it won’t be your conscious realm that rules this universe. It’ll be Nara-Narayana’s.”

  My head throbbed with the mental powers I had been mastering during my recent journey. I focused my thoughts on the two beasts standing beside me and they crumbled to dust. I took control of a third black beast and it returned my Intersplit gun.

  “Your mental feats are unimpressive,” said the Fume. “Your small powers can’t help you. As for your weapon, it’s useless against me, as you already know.”

  I looked to Orsteen. “Forgive me, my friend. There’s no hope left to save humankind.” I turned a hateful gaze to the Fume. “Consider your conduit into this universe closed.”

  I pressed the Intersplit gun to my own head and fired.

  In that moment of suicide, as my head was completely obliterated from the point-blank impact of an energy blast, I found that my thoughts and existence persisted beyond the flesh. Something miraculous ensued. I gained a different perspective of the universe and realized my part within it.

  The Fume had once told me how the universe was composed of intangibles that pulsed and seethed through its ethos. Maybe it was the rapture of my body, but I suddenly understood those intangibles. It was as if a veil had been lifted from my eyes, and the universe was no longer that complex monster I had once thought it to be. I felt as though countless threads of thought radiated from my unique node of consciousness, connecting me to everything in the universe.

  Suddenly, I found myself returned to my body. I was back in the coliseum, facing the Fume.

  The Fume laughed with such abundance that his current manifestation could barely maintain definite form. “Your attempt was unsuccessful, Theron. As a result of your new function, acting as my conduit into this universe, your vital forces have matured beyond the normal limitations of the body. You’ve reached a condition in which you cannot die.”

  Orsteen stepped toward me and touched my face. “The whole of your head regenerated in a strange and miraculous way.”

  I laughed, stifling the Fume’s laughter.

  “What do you find amusing?” asked the Fume.

  “You underestimate what I’ve become, and what I’m capable of doing. Just within that small moment of disembodiment, I tasted the secrets of the universe. Whatever you’ve put inside me, it’s caused me to evolve beyond your expectations.”

  I tilted my head up to the light of Nara-Narayana’s divinity, spread my arms wide as if to embrace the infinities above me, and proclaimed: “With awakened eyes, I can fathom all the depths of the universe! I can travel through it without vessel or device, but by thought alone!”

  My body underwent a fa
ntastic dissolution, after which I existed as a shimmering wisp of energy, thought, and soul. In an instant, my new constitution sped out into the universe, leaving the Fume snatching with desperate hands at the empty air left in my wake.

  TRANSCENDENCE

  Like a ghostly comet, I traveled across the universe at impossible speeds. In short time, I arrived at the center of Nara-Narayana’s growing divinity, at the heart of the Brahman Sprawl.

  As if by second nature, I reconstituted my body and was again my former self of flesh and blood. The transformation left me disoriented and trembling. What is this place? Where is she? Is this the center of her divine consciousness?

  I looked up and found myself standing within a spherical structure, at least a kilometer in diameter. Ancient machines surrounded me. The sphere’s inner walls were lined with thousands of mechanical nodes. They shot forth rivers of shimmering blue energy.

  It’s beautiful, breathtaking.

  I followed the flow of the energy streams. They cascaded toward the center of the sphere and converged on a floating mass that I couldn’t identify. What was it? I examined it with wonder. It was alive. It was monstrous. A heap of brain matter, pale and glistening. It absorbed the rivers of energy into its cerebral tissues, as if feeding on them.

  My God, this ‘thing’ is Nara-Narayana.

  She had once been that awkward young girl in Sensimion’s care, but was now an enormous creature of brain matter. I noticed something dangling from her surface. I strained my vision and found it to be a withered body, attached to the cerebral mass by a long, drawn neck, all tendon and sinew. After twenty-one million years, Nara-Narayana’s vestigial body remained attached to her great sensorium like an obstinate fruit refusing to fall from its branch, shriveled and old.

  As I marveled at Nara-Narayana’s magnificent form, two great eyes protruded from the cerebral mass. My head echoed with Nara-Narayana’s thoughts: “You’re too late to stop me, Theron Mobius. I’ve spread far into the Brahman Sprawl, successfully evolving the universe into a realm of my pure consciousness. I know why you’ve come here. Even if you kill my corporeal form, I’ll survive, since my thoughts stretch beyond this archaic structure, which has imprisoned me for an eternity. My transcendental energies are all around us. Just beyond the walls of this sphere, I’m a god.”

  “If such is the case, then why does this place still exist? I believe your assertions are premature. I believe that until you assimilate all the souls and matter within the Brahman Sprawl, this corporeal form remains necessary for you to maintain the cohesion of your evolved self. This hideous form is still the nexus of your thought.”

  At that moment, the entire spherical complex underwent a volatile episode, during which the matter of Nara-Narayana’s sensorium went into a state of flux.

  “You see,” said Nara-Narayana, “even now I’m absorbing galaxies in the Brahman Sprawl. And as my divine consciousness expands, this form becomes more and more obsolete. As you just witnessed, I’m barely able to maintain this corporeal state.”

  “What are these rivers of energy you absorb?”

  “Each river is a linkage to the thoughts and souls of an entire galaxy of human beings within the Brahman Sprawl. Their thoughts flow directly into me.”

  “This is how you’re connected to everyone?”

  “Indeed.”

  I noticed a dozen of them extinguish. “Why do they dissipate?”

  “When I transform the energies of a galaxy, I’m also transforming the souls of all the people within it, utilizing them to form my matrix of consciousness. Thus they become a part of me, and since they’re no longer with body, my connection to their biolinguistic lobes cease.”

  I waved my hand in a careless gesture. “Since you’re so confident I can’t stop you, there’ll be no harm if I destroy your corporeal body.”

  Nara-Narayana paused. “And how will you accomplish this feat?”

  “I myself have become a demigod of sorts.” I felt a rush of power as I gave my full focus to Nara-Narayana’s great sensorium, striving to do her harm.

  “I’m a thousand-fold your superior,” proclaimed Nara-Narayana. “You’re a speck on my thoughts. Be gone from me, maggot!”

  “I’m not the maggot!” I howled. “I’m the maggot’s disease that’ll bring you death.”

  As I pushed forth my mental energies, I felt Nara-Narayana pushing back, not a thousand-fold but a trillion-fold. She was indeed my superior. Death was upon me. Despite being the hybridization of the Fume and Nara-Narayana, I still wasn’t a god. Nara-Narayana had a power over me that I couldn’t match. And as my soul was on the verge of collapse, I experienced a strange moment, as if time slowed or my perceptions accelerated. I noticed a thread of energy hovering above me. It emanated from my head and meandered through the air toward Nara-Narayana’s sensorium. I batted my hand at it, trying to interrupt its flow. It stretched and curled, unfazed by the assault.

  This is her power over me. This is her strength. My biolinguistic lobe connects me to her.

  “I’m no longer just human. I’m not one of the many. I’m more. I am Theron Mobius.” I focused on my own body and mind, and went into a state of flux. I reached for the back of my head and pushed my fingers inward. I gripped onto a piece of my brain and tore it out. In my hand, I presented Nara-Narayana with my severed biolinguistic lobe. The thread of energy emanated from it for one last moment and then dissipated.

  “My soul is free of you!” I dropped the brain organ to the ground and smashed it under a vengeful foot.

  A new fire blazed in my heart. A deep droning resonated from my center. It grew louder and louder. With all my spirit, I unleashed my power on her. I felt the very substance of her sensorium. Her brain matter undulated and writhed. Her vital fluids boiled.

  “Stop this!” she wailed. “You can’t destroy me without consequence? You were correct when you said my corporeal form is maintaining the cohesion of my divine self beyond this complex. If you kill me now, all the energy composing my divine self will be released in a wave of destruction that will sterilize the universe of all life. No one will gain if you destroy me—not myself, not the Fume, and certainly not humankind.”

  I withdrew my attack. “Lies! You’re stalling since you’re so close to completely assimilating the Brahman Sprawl and reaching your full potential.”

  “I assure you, what I’ve said is true.”

  My mind reeled with panic and dread. She’s not lying. I can sense it. What do I do? How do I stop her? How do I save them? She’s close to transcending her corporeal form. Do something! Do it now!

  My thoughts came to a moment of epiphany. “I’ve been changing, you know. At first, I thought these powers were just a side effect of my connection to you and the Fume. But I now realize they’re not merely abstract powers I command, but the universe itself. I believe I share the same understanding and dominion over the universe as you do. I believe I have the power to stand here at the center of the universe’s evolution, and replace your consciousness with my own.”

  Nara-Narayana’s cerebral form trembled as if from laughter. “I’ve lived a life of extraordinary duration, during which I’ve been connected to many souls in the Brahman Sprawl. I’ve grown into an entity of unparalleled power and influence over this universe. You’re delusional, Theron Mobius, to think you could stand in my place and control the forces swelling just beyond these walls.”

  The remaining rivers of thought extinguished.

  It’s now or never, I thought. She’s completely assimilated all the souls in the Brahman Sprawl.

  “I’ve nothing to lose,” I said, as I released the full force of my powers to destroy her sensorium. It was more difficult, since her substance underwent a volatile flux as she strived to transcend her corporeal form. I feared my powers weren’t enough. I thought of Allienora lying dead on that altar.

  I’ve already failed my one true love. I won’t fail again. This is for Allienora. This is for humankind.

  From th
e depths of my soul I summoned all my energies.

  Nara-Narayana released a miserable wail that shook the fabric of her universe. Her great sensorium ruptured, and a discharge of vital fluids sputtered and spilled, raining down upon me. The long, thin neck of her vestigial body at last snapped, and the withered remains of her former humanity fell only meters from where I stood.

  The size of Nara-Narayana’s sensorium quickly diminished, as lobes of brain matter sloughed away, piece by piece.

  The final remaining core of Nara-Narayana’s sensorium fell away, and I sent myself adrift. I floated up to the center of the sphere and took Nara-Narayana’s place.

  “I am Theron Mobius! I am myself! My mind is the center!” A devastating wave of energy closed in upon me from every direction. I felt pain and ecstasy. The walls of the sphere dissolved and my corporeal body transcended.

  Stillness... clarity... I felt as though the entire universe rested on a single point of thought. I had become a god.

  LULLIBIES

  TO

  OBLIVION

  Orsteen watched as the shimmering silver-white matrix of consciousness slowly filled the breadth of the sky. He prayed Theron could stop Nara-Narayana before she completely transcended. If not, the end of humankind neared. Orsteen looked at the Fume’s manifestation, which stood less than five meters away. It stared at the growing divinity so intensely that Orsteen imagined its gaze might split the very fabric of the universe asunder.

  As Orsteen understood it, even if Nara-Narayana’s divine energies made it to the Fume’s outpocketing, the Fume still couldn’t carry on with his plan. Theron was supposed to act as the conduit for the Fume to move freely into the universe and absorb the divine energies. But Theron was gone.

  Orsteen stepped to Allienora’s remains and paid his respects. She was a beautiful woman, undeserving of such cruelty. He tore off a piece of his shirt and placed it over her face.

  “It’ll be over soon, dear girl.”