Moho (Part One: Rise of a Symbol)

by Persadia

  “Stop it!” I yell and follow her.

  “There is no Aleeya here to save you this time, is there?” she shouts and tries to laugh but she can’t conceal the crushing effort it takes to control all those uniforms and the heavy bodies inside. And before we reach the cliff, the first people drop to the ground. She feels it and gets even angrier, which leads to more people dropping to the ground. I can hear her breathing heavily and it doesn’t take long until she loses control of her last hostage. She is totally exhausted, gasping for air.

  “Oh! Thank The Spring!” I exclaim in relief.

  “Don’t rush it,” she says and takes more deep, loud breaths before she adds, “I have enough energy for one more.”

  I observe the people on the ground behind her but none of them move. Then I see two small feet flying past my eyes. I look up and right at Maya’s closed eyes and her dangling head. I immediately reach out to grab her feet but Pax pulls her up even higher into the air and quickly moves her over the cliff. Now Maya is hanging in midair, the ocean below her. I stretch my body as far as I can without falling off the cliff but she is out of my reach. Pax is breathing so hard by now that I’m afraid she will lose conscience herself any second.

  “Let go off her!” I shout at Pax.

  “Exactly,” she says, takes another deep breath, and drops to the ground. Maya’s uniform immediately sags and she rushes towards the ocean. I try to take control of her uniform but I haven’t learned how to do that yet! Next, I try her body but I know that doesn’t work because it’s impossible to mentally connect to someone else’s body. Then I notice something else that is in her uniform. She is carrying a Glowing Stone under her top and I’m able to pull her up by connecting to the small stone under her uniform. It is exhausting and it looks terrible. Her stomach, pulled up by the stone under her top, is coming up first, her head, arms and legs are dangling in the wind. After a draining few minutes she is close enough so that I can grab her light body and pull her back onto the safety of Center Island. She is still unconscious and I’m not far from it myself. I’m about to rest next to Maya when I notice with panic that Pax is gone! No one is standing. Maybe she has fallen unconscious as well. I could barely pull up one person and she held up hundreds. I sit back down next to Maya and take her hand. She is still breathing, her heart is still beating.

  Suddenly a high-pitched scream numbs my ears. First I think it’s in my head, that Pax is starting some mental attack, but when I press my hands against my ears, the scream fades. She is torturing someone and now I see who. Aziz is crawling around the ground nearby the temple. Pax is leaning against a pile of Icestones, barely able to keep her eyes open. She looks at Aziz in delight. He is pressing his hands against his ears and screams and yet I can’t hear why he is covering his ears. Except for his screams, Center Island is silent. I shake him and try to wake him up but he doesn’t respond. He simply keeps on screaming. His face is warped in agony. So I decide to do something no one is ever supposed to do but Pax is doing it and I don’t see another way to help him. I break into his mind and into his CEBOS, to see what he is seeing.

  In a blink of an eye, I find myself in a space that I had heard about in some session but I had somehow never gone to myself. I’m in Aziz’s Imaginationweb. And so is Pax.

  The Imaginationweb is a bit different compared to the other spaces in CEBOS. It is basically a slim, vertical cylinder with brightly glowing Essencestrings running from left to right, back and forth and from the ceiling all the way down to the bottom, forming one giant, confusing web. At the bottom of the Imaginationweb, there is a cloud, an Imaginationcloud, showing what Aziz is imagining right now. He thinks dozens of sound waves are pointed directly at him and follow him wherever he crawls. Doesn’t he realize that what he sees is not real? How can there be sound waves without a source? Anyway, he thinks he is being tortured by a seemingly unbearably loud sound. For him it’s real.

  Pax, who is standing at the bottom of the Imaginationweb, seems to cause his pain and that needs to stop. If he loses all his energy and Essenchi because of this torture, his essence will leave his body and Pax wins. So I make my way down to her, but it’s difficult. The Essencestrings are flexible and almost impossible to walk or even stand on. Wherever two or more strings cross, there is a Thoughttree, a Memorybubble, or an older Imaginationcloud. All those thoughts, memories, and older mental images are connected by the web of Essencestrings. According to the designers of CEBOS, whatever one imagines is based on old memories, thoughts, or other mental images. It is normal that some of them detach themselves from the web of Essencestrings and fall into the currently forming Imaginationcloud. But Pax is manipulating this process. She is standing on one Essencestring close to the Imaginationcloud at the bottom. With one hand she holds onto an Essencestring to not fall into the Imaginationcloud herself and with her other hand she tears little Thoughttrees and Memorybubbles off the web of Essencestrings and throws them into the Imaginationcloud. She takes Aziz’s negative memories and thoughts of sound, volume, torture, and pain to fuel the ever increasing Imaginationcloud. I’m getting close to her but she sees me, stops the torture and climbs all the way from the center of the Imaginationweb to the mesh forming the walls of the Imaginationweb. Without all the negative thoughts and memories, Aziz’s imagined torture stops and the cloud turns black. He is probably asleep again. Good.

  Pax is leaning against the wall. She is sweaty, breathing heavily, and having trouble keeping her eyes open. It’s possible that she may fall asleep any minute.

  “What are you trying to do here? Aziz hasn’t done anything to you,” I argue.

  “I'm doing this for us. He hasn’t done anything to anyone. His reputation is pristine. That is the whole point,” she says and needs to pause for a moment. She wipes sweat of her forehead and adds, “We are going to create mental images more terrifying than the worst nightmare… a night terror. I made him think The Spring disappeared and that I tortured him. Now you go ahead and give him another round of torture. When he wakes up he will think this night terror was a prophecy and that we are the ones who will cause the last Spring to disappear and spread terror around Persadia. He will share this night terror with all of his navee friends. And we will become known as the cruelest torturers Persadia has ever known. We will become famous as the creators of The Third Dark Time. We will destroy this planet. It's going to be awesome and our reign hasn’t even begun.”

  “I’m obviously not going to do that but I’m glad to hear you will wake them up.”

  “You leave me no choice. You haven’t felt the rejection I have endured all those cycles. But soon you will and then you will join me,” she says, almost to herself, like a mantra.

  Now she turns towards the mesh making up the wall behind her and pushes her fists against it until it bursts. There is a narrow slit in the mesh now. She grabs the sides of the hole and tears the mesh further apart until it’s big enough for her to walk through it. But instead of disappearing in the wall she climbs back towards the dark, empty Imaginationcloud and starts throwing Memorybubbles and Thoughttrees into it once more. Soon Aziz is imagining another round of torture but he doesn’t press his hands against his ears this time. No, this time he is imagining that Pax is forcing soil down his mouth and nose. She makes it look like she has connected to the soil he is sitting on and makes him believe she is pushing it into his body openings, threatening to suffocate him. Aziz is panicking and tries to cover his nostrils and mouth with his hands but Pax is squeezing the dirt through his fingers. It’s a terrifying view even though I know it’s not real.

  Pax turns her head towards the hole in the wall she made earlier and suddenly doubles of Aziz come pouring out of the hole - his emotions. But none of them are positive. All of his Emotionclones are either fear, terror, alarm or panic and they walk straight into the Imaginationcloud, exponentially increasing his misery.

  I try to reach her to stop fueling this night terror with more negative thoughts, memories, and emotions. But befo
re I can reach her, the last bit of remaining energy leaves Pax. She slips off the shaky Essencestring she is standing on, and falls down into the Imaginationcloud out of sight. She is gone but it’s not over. The emotions keep pouring into the Imaginationcloud, with or without Pax. I look into his fear-ridden face and that’s when it hits me. I remember what he said to me last night in his Dreamspace. Nightmares can be fought with hope and I realize that I’ve seen what he needs right now in his Dreamspace as well. One of his biggest dreams was that new Springs appear on Persadia. Pax has already made him believe that The Spring is gone so I have to make him believe there are at least two Springs. I look around and actually find a little Memorybubble that contains The Spring. But I need another one and I think I see the bright glow of The Spring in one of the Memorybubbles above my head. I can’t reach it from the bottom of the Imaginationweb where I’m standing. So I tightly hold on to the one Memorybubble in my hand and make my way across the elastic web to the other Memorybubble that I need to hopefully end Aziz’ suffering. When I reach for it, I have to let go off the last Essencestring I'm holding on to. I'm now balancing on the elastic Essencestring high above the ground. Several Essencestrings cross where the second Memorybubble is attached to the web and I have to pull really hard to rip it off the web. When I finally do, I lose all connection to the web and fall down into the Imaginationcloud. I have both Memorybubbles, each in one hand. I fall right through the Imaginationcloud and feel how half of my body hits Pax who is still lying there and my other half hits the soft mesh. I’ve lasted longer than anyone else but now all my energy is depleted as well. I fall unconscious.

  Chapter 13

  Age of Death (3/4)

  "I miss home sometimes," I say.

  "I miss it every day," my mom admits. "But we can't go back."

  "I know."

  We are sitting nearby a cliff overlooking the ocean. It is much warmer than in the forest and the cemetery.

  "Mom?"

  "Yes, my dear?"

  "There is something I've been thinking about lately. You don't want to talk about it, I know, but I think I have the right to know. And I swear I don't mean it in a negative way but — "

  "Don't be shy, my dear. We can talk about anything," she encourages me.

  "What I was wondering… Why did he leave?" I ask.

  "He left without telling me. You know that."

  "But what do you think? You must have some idea," I argue.

  "Well… your father was a very unhappy man when he left. He wasn't like that when I first met him. When he was young he seemed like any other young man I had dated before him. He was very protective of me, he deeply cared about his friends and he was very charming, very quick to laugh — whenever he wanted to be at least… In a way, we were friends before we were lovers. But as the years flew buy, it became clear to me that he had serious issues that my love couldn't fix. I tried, trust me… I think the expectations that he had built up in his mind over the years of what kind of son, friend, husband, and father he wanted to be grew from admirably ambitious to alarmingly absurd. He didn't have a sense of self that was on par with reality. I think he didn't know what kind of man he wanted to be for himself because he didn't seem to get any satisfaction out of himself, only through other people. So when his dreams stayed dreams, he became depressed."

  "Why didn't you cheer him up?" I ask.

  "Oh, I did. I did many things for your father, trust me, my dear. I tried to make him happy just as he had made me happy all those years before. But I was forced to learn that depression and sadness are not the same. Sadness is an emotion you can balance out with other emotions. Depression, on the other hand, is the absence of emotions. Once your emotions are gone, they are gone. All that remains is emptiness, not the feeling of emptiness, just emptiness," she explains.

  "I don't understand. He probably was just very, very sad," I say.

  "No, you're right, you don't understand. And if there is one thing I wish you more than anything else in the world it's that you will never experience the struggles of depression yourself."

  "So do you think he…"

  "I don't want to. Yes, he was very sick but I am convinced that once you've been born, once you've touched the lives of other people, you lose the right to take yourself out of their lives."

  "So no one ever has that right," I repeat.

  "Right. You are obligated to support the structure you've helped to build. When he promised to stay with me for the rest of my life and I adjusted myself to his promise, he lost the right to break that promise."

  "And yet he did."

  "We don't know that. We don't know anything," she says with a shaky voice. I take her hand.

  "So you still have hope that he will return?" I ask.

  "I must as long as I'm alive."

  Neither of us can talk for a while and so we just stare at the ocean while we hold onto each other tightly. Suddenly I feel how the skin on the back of her hand gets thinner. I look at her hand in mine and realize with horror that her skin has turned wrinkly and spotty. I look into her watery eyes which close a second later. Her hair turns white.

  "Mom! No!" I scream.

  I try to hug her but she can't hug me any longer. She is dead.

  Chapter 14

  Inside The Outsider

  “Mom!”

  My heart is racing. Blood is thrusting itself through my neck and into my head. My lips are trembling with rage. Sweat is running down my body and tears are running down my hot face. My lungs are pushing hard against my ribs. Every breath of cold air irritates my hot throat.

  I look straight through the opening in the ceiling and into the starry night sky above me. How long was I asleep? I get up from the Nightstone and feel my naked feet stepping onto warm gravel. While the entry hall is usually empty, someone set up a bed and arranged thousands of colorful, tiny Glowing Stones around it. And then put me on the Nightstone, I suppose. But why?

  For a moment all of this throws me. Then my brain floods my body with rage once more. Someone killed my mom and everyone else I loved. I finally realize that those dreams weren’t dreams —they were memories. I storm out of the dorm towards Crystal Cave and it’s not until I reach its entrance when I realize that Central Island is empty now. All the hundreds of people that dropped unconscious yesterday, or however long I’ve slept, are gone. Except one of them who I find inside Crystal Cave. It’s Vijay and he is as awake and agile as always. Before he can say or even fully realize my presence, I connect to as much ice as possible, rip it off the ground it is covering and shoot the sharp shreds straight at Vijay. He forms a shield by freezing the water in a puddle in front of him. My ice smashes his shield before it falls to the ground without ever reaching Vijay. The expression in his face quickly changes from utter shock to playful excitement. He has been waiting for another one of our fights for a long time.

  Next, he forms a wide cylinder of water that is taller than both of us and sends it my way. It hits and swallows me. He lets it spin around itself, making it impossible for me to escape. The panic squeezes all oxygen out of my lungs, my head starts aching, but he keeps spinning me around in the cold water. So I connect to the icicles hanging from the ceiling above his head and led them fall onto him. He escapes my attack but he loses control of the water and it rushes back towards the floor. I’m free.

  We go back and forth like this for a long time until we can’t stand on our own feet any more. Then we crawl towards a wall of the cave to lean against it and relax. No one says anything while we are gasping for air. Then we inspect our worn-out bodies. After a while, Vijay can’t even lean against the wall any more and slides flat onto the ground. He is lying on the cold floor, all limbs stretched away from his exhausted body.

  “I’ve missed you,” Vijay says between several breaths. “We made a good team in the virtual world as well, I know, but games simply don’t compare to reality.”

  “I know. Pushing your body all the way towards the edge is satisfying. There is no
thing like an intense physical workout,” I agree.

  “No, there isn’t. But… you better keep this here behind your Wall of Secrets,” Vijay says, still breathing heavily.

  “Obviously,” I agree.

  “No, I’m just saying,” he insists and takes a few breaths before he adds, “billions of navees are looking up to you now. They’d be heartbroken if they found out what their 'Savior' was doing at night.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “Me neither… but Aziz, or 'The Prophet', insists on his vision."

  “What?” I ask.

  “Let me show you on INOP,” he says and we close our eyes.

  It’s raining and the crowd is dancing. It all looks like Cosmoday. Then Aziz drops to the ground, everything turns black for a moment and when he and everyone else open their eyes again, the glow of The Spring slowly fades until The Spring is gone. Suddenly it’s much darker and people start crying, begging The Spring to return.

  Pax appears, lets the air on Center Island vibrate and uses the resulting sound for torture. But unlike in Aziz’ night terror, this time she tortures everyone on the island simultaneously. Then she forces soil down their throats and everyone is trying hard to keep it out of their bodies. After a while, she stops. People spit the dirt out of their mouths, get together in groups, and hongi. Many are crying or screaming in despair. But Pax isn’t done yet. She lets the sea level rise until the ocean swallows everyone, including herself. The people are having trouble keeping their heads above water. And then the scene turns from horror to ecstasy when my giant face appears in the sky, the sea level recedes and then my hands appear in the sky as well and place two Springs on the horizon. The crowd breaks into ecstatic cheer as if all the torture didn’t happen.