by Ryu Mitsuse
The prince’s arms shook; his hands clenched into fists on his lap. Swallowing his fear, he looked up at Asura.
“But who brought this ruin here? Who brought the calm of death, the peace of destruction? Was it not you, Asura, and your minions who visited devastation upon this place?”
Asura ignored the prince’s words, letting them pass by her as though she had no ears with which to hear him. “Do not forget, my prince, that I am a part of this world too. My existence is but one aspect of its reality. Listen well, my prince.” Asura’s cheeks were red in the light of the aurora. With each passing moment, another part of the sky was burning.
“The cause of this world’s devastation does not originate within this world. Destruction and growth are merely two aspects of change. Even the death of a man is not a true destruction—it is one step in the cycle of reincarnation. However, the destruction that threatens this world now is the true destruction; it will leave this place unchanging, forever stilled. All the energy of this world will be converted in the end to heat energy, and that will spill out into the universe until perfect equilibrium is reached and heat death arrives.”
Asura averted her eyes, as though she were seeing her prediction play out before her. “Brahmā does not heed my warnings. He would claim that the source of this devastation is my army of minions and the violence they represent. And he is welcome to his theories. And yet . . .”
The eerie light of the aurora sent flames up the side of Asura’s face. The light seemed to pierce her robes, painting the thin muscles at her shoulders the color of the sky. “He must know of the cakravarti-rājan.”
“And what is this cakravarti-rājan of which you speak?”
“The Brahmins can tell you as well as I. He is the King of Kings, the master of karma. He stands without this world, and has viewed its life and growth for more than one trillion years.”
“Have you ever met the cakravarti-rājan?”
Asura glanced at the prince, a surprised look on her face. Then she slowly shook her head. “My prince. No one has seen the cakravarti-rājan. Nor do we know where he might be. Yet all who know his name know that, not long from now, the cakravarti-rājan will appear in this world. And when he does he will rule over all as the one great God, the Creator, he who transcends karma.”
“But is it not Maitreya who is destined to save humanity in the time of the last dharma?”
The dim flames lighting the distant horizon seemed to spread nearer now, scorching the sky, surging forward like a giant wave. Bands of deeper crimson appeared; then blue rings of light rose again into the sky. The brilliant colors were reflected in Asura’s clear eyes.
“My prince, no one knows what Maitreya is in truth. They say that he waits in the Tuṣita Pure Land for the age of the last dharma, yet it is unclear whether he awaits the end of days itself or the salvation of humanity. Which is it? Is Maitreya truly worthy of the hopeful worship that is showered upon him? That is the question that none will answer—that must be answered. That is why I raised an army and moved against Brahmā. It is because I believed the fate of our world had been left to hang solely on the existence of Maitreya.”
“I had heard it was because of past karma, but I see you had other aims. Why did Brahmā not listen to your words?”
“I do not know, though I suspect—”
“Thought control?”
“Precisely. It seems we agree on one thing at least.” Asura crossed her arms and grinned, her white teeth stark against her dark skin.
“I would like to see for myself what Maitreya is,” Siddhārtha muttered, his eyes watching the kaleidoscopic sky.
“You would do well to do so, my prince. Even the Brahmin monks have not met Maitreya. Yes . . . find him, and see the truth for yourself.”
Siddhārtha stood unsteadily. He detected the faint smell of oil and decay on the icy cold wind that blew across the plain. Turning his back on Asura, he strode away in silence. He hadn’t the faintest idea in which direction Tovatsue lay, yet he knew with conviction that so long as he moved forward, his feet would unerringly lead him there.
The icy wind blew at his back, a reminder of the distant montage of battle. Something far away was burning. The curtain of flame in the sky was spreading wider in pulses, its brightness increasing and then retreating, sending new jets of flame in all directions.
“My prince,” said Asura, who seemed to be walking alongside him, though he had not seen her approach, “Maitreya is in the center of Tuṣita, in the Pearl Palace. I will lead you there.”
“Lead me? Can you even enter Tovatsue?”
“Though the Brahmin may not enter my camp, I can enter all Six Heavens of the Realm of Desire, and all the other heavens besides. They will not see me. And even if they could, they cannot harm me. This is why even Śakra with his Four Heavenly Kings and Eight Generals has been fighting me for four hundred million years and has not won a single victory.”
“Why can they not see you? They are no primitives to be so easily deceived.”
“They cannot see me because they do not try. It’s a form of self-hypnosis—an information processing error. Recognition is merely the result of information processing, you know.”
Asura extended her right hand toward the prince’s face. A fearsome light blazed in her eyes.
“For example—”
The walls of the honeycomb-shaped compartment were slightly warped, as though they had been crushed from above. A forced-air device attached to some kind of humidity controller was malfunctioning, and it gave off a rattling, threatening sound. The muggy air blowing in through the duct carried sand inside, creating a brownish yellow pattern on the walls of the corridor. Metal containers had been stacked along all the walls—most of them were corroded, their doors hanging open, the equipment inside covered with thick red rust. Dozens of pipes and electrical lines ran along the high ceiling, and all were coated in a thick layer of dust.
“There is an express lift up ahead. The one with the lit orange sign goes to the control area.”
They moved into the corridor. Its floor was layered with a thin carpet of grayish sand, or perhaps dust, and it sucked at Siddhārtha’s feet as he walked. Several lifts were visible, but only two appeared to be operational. The shutter door covering one of them had buckled and ripped like old paper, parts of it falling away to reveal the cavernous depths beyond. Siddhārtha heard the echoing sound of a compressor working somewhere off in the distance.
“Why is no one here?” he asked, peering up and down the long corridor.
“Once, this place and every level above it was filled with citizens. It was a lively city. Clothing, food, shelter—everything was meticulously managed and planned. People here lived to be five hundred years of age on average, and they lived rich lives.”
“What happened?”
“I do not know. When we first came to this land, Tovatsue, at least, showed no signs of decay. This was truly the kingdom of the gods that the Brahmin said it was—and many were the men who saw the city in her glory.”
“Men? Humans?”
Like a shadow, Asura glided down the corridor. Perhaps she was weightless, for where she stepped she left no marks in the dust.
“In those days, there was a close connection between this place and the world of men. Some of those who came here built the city-states of Sumer and Mohenjo-Daro. The aqueducts and sewers, the paved roads, the centrally controlled lighting, the moving stairs . . . all were built with knowledge obtained here.”
“I did not know that any men had traveled to places such as this.”
“Have you ever heard of the towers in Egypt they call the pyramids?”
“The stupas?”
“You could call them that.”
“I heard stories of them from merchants who came from the west. They said they were as large as the hills and mountains.”
“The technology used to construct the pyramids was obtained here,” Asura said. “They were built using a variety of gr
avity field generation.”
The prince continued on down the corridor, his mind empty, his gaze drifting aimlessly ahead. He could not begin to imagine how Tuṣita was connected to the world of men, but he could understand how, if men came here, it would have a profound influence on their world.
“Get in.”
Asura had paused before a lift. Siddhārtha turned and stepped inside the square metal box that served to carry its passengers.
There was a slight vibration and the lift began to move, yet though he knew they were in motion, the prince had no idea whether they were going up or down.
A sudden fear struck his chest, becoming a physical constriction in his throat.
Perhaps I will be stuck in this tiny space for an eternity?
“Asura!” he cried, half choking. His own voice in his ears sounded deadened, like a voice at the bottom of the ocean. “Asura!”
“Yes, my prince?”
Siddhārtha heard a soft, familiar voice behind him.
“You are here!”
Asura stood, back to the metal wall, legs slightly crossed. Her large eyes glimmered mischievously.
“Might we say that man prefers the company of evil to the ache of loneliness?”
The prince hung his head. Sweat mingled with the chagrined tears that ran down his cheeks.
Asura laughed gently. “No worries, my prince. I do not judge you. That is just what Maudgalyayana and that lot would say; pay it no mind.”
The lift continued its downward progress. As the two descended through the many levels of Tovatsue, the signs of devastation grew steadily worse. Abandoned compartments stood like dark caves behind countless rusting doors. Though parts of some walls still emitted a greenish luminescence, many sections had gone dark entirely. Others were split by enormous cracks, their tiles askew, fallen to the floor or smashed to dust. Sections of the corridor walls were severely warped and discolored to a sickly yellow hue by what appeared to be fire damage; in some places the damaged walls bulged out into the middle of the passageways, nearly cutting off all travel. Clearly some form of intense heat had hit the corridors from the outside. Perhaps Asura’s attacks penetrated this far.
Only one section of the ruined city still bustled with activity—a corridor that ran alongside the power lines that stretched up from the nuclear reactor at the bottom of the city, crossing the metropolis at its center. The prince could see a well-illuminated area where it seemed workers had once been housed. He could also hear sounds from within the undamaged corridor—people talking, some kind of work going on. Whoever they were, they seemed strangely separated from the rest of the city down here, like miners stranded deep in a mine.
Siddhārtha wondered if they even knew what was going on outside their walls. And he wondered if human misery was an eternal constant. Were men fated to live their lives knowing nothing, understanding nothing?
“Just how large are your armies, Asura?”
Asura lifted an eyebrow at Siddhārtha. “Some say they number sixty million, some say six hundred billion. Whenever one falls it will rise again as two. When two fall, they rise again as four—and we have been fighting Śakra’s troops for a very long time, so I’ve completely lost track of their numbers. Śakra’s troops are well trained, well equipped, and eager to provide me with reinforcements in this manner.”
The prince thought gloomily about the soldiers’ future, wondering how many of them knew their own origin or the meaning or purpose for which they fought, or how long the war would last.
“We are here,” Asura announced a moment later. She stopped the lift and pointed toward a large set of doors. There were cracks in the luminescent material that covered the doors, and a pale, silvery metal was visible beneath.
“Here?”
“This leads to the level where Maitreya may be found.”
Gingerly, the prince put his hand upon the doors and pushed. They opened inward without a sound. A waterfall of pale blue light spilled down from the high ceiling above. Siddhārtha’s shadow stretched across the room. He looked down at the floor and his eyes widened. “Asura! You have no shadow.”
“Shadow?”
“Look upon the floor! Only my shadow can be seen.”
“My prince, this is because I’m not actually here. I remain upon the battlefield where we first met. From where I stand, I can see the sky above Tovatsue and the blue-ringed explosions of the lithium bombs. The sky-shell over Tovatsue is such that even with the incredible heat generated by the bombs and the radiation, we’re having trouble breaking through. It’ll take another several thousand, perhaps a million, years before we see real progress. If this is what those monks meant by ‘former karma,’ they may have been more accurate than I thought.” Asura’s voice came drifting into the prince’s mind like a gentle breeze over a great distance.
He glared at her. “Asura!”
“We’d best continue on, my prince,” she said, pointing down the corridor with her chin. “Go see what Maitreya is, and then return to your world at once. You must not forget what you find here—what the faith of your world rests upon.”
Then the prince walked for what seemed to be an impossibly long time—hours, days. He grew greatly fatigued.
At last he heard Asura’s voice again. “There, through those doors. Maitreya is there.”
The corridor ended at a giant pair of doors. They were flat, made of silvery metal without ornamentation, and were several dozen meters in height and width. They closed off the entire end of the enormous corridor.
“How can I possibly open such large doors?” The prince craned his neck to look up at them.
“Do not stop, my prince. Keep walking,” Asura said from behind him. His legs carried him forward of their own volition. A numbness crept over his mind, dulling all thought and emotion except the nightmarish fear that began to rise within him.
“Straight ahead! Go!”
The doors were directly in front of him now, filling his sight. He walked steadily, propelled by a mysterious strength, striding directly into the flat metal surface.
For a moment he lost all sensation. For the first time, the prince felt that his own death was near.
Is this . . . an ocean?
All around the prince clear, blue light stretched as far as he could see. The light seemed to flow into his body like air into his lungs, swirling inside him.
He heard not a sound. The prince’s heart beat faster than he thought possible, and the fear made his breath as ragged and wild as a storm, yet he could not hear the hammering of his heart nor feel the rasping of his breath. He felt nothing.
Everything was wrapped in an eternal silence, as though he’d stepped into the land of the dead.
He moved out into the thin light. It shone through him from the right and left, the front and back, until he became transparent, shadowless.
What is that?
Far off, deep within the pale blue light, he saw a giant shadow.
“Maitreya . . .”
Now he could see the form of a single śramaña far off in the pale sea of light: the future savior, deep in eternal contemplation.
The prince ran without blinking, eyes fixed on that dark shape looming in the void.
So this is Maitreya! At last!
Abruptly Siddhārtha stopped, standing as though turned to stone. Errant thoughts boiled upward in his mind, somehow bursting with a roar in this soundless place.
Maitreya—
The being called Maitreya was seated right there in front of him. His right leg was tucked in above his left knee; he had put his right elbow on it and had leaned forward to rest his cheek upon his upturned hand. His eyes, half lidded, stared out at something beyond space and time. Insurmountable pain played across his brow. He wore a crown shaped like an upturned boat, its top so tall it seemed it could touch the glowing blue of the ceiling.
“Maitreya!”
The prince’s voice wavered wildly through the blue expanse. All that he knew of the being before
him came flooding into his consciousness.
Maitreya. A Brahmin from the Deccan Plateau in southern India. Through his devotion, he had been reborn in Tuṣita, where he would remain in the Inner Court until the age of the last dharma, 5,670,000,000 years from now, when he would once again be sent to the world of Jambudvīpa, there to be born to a father, Subrahmana, and mother, Brahmavati, and attain Buddhahood in an orchard beneath a Dragon Flower Tree.
The world Maitreya would descend upon would be very different from the world of today. There would be no mountains or valleys, only a flat plain like a mirror. All land would be fertile, and there would be no want of food, nor any need for storage of grains. All men would enjoy a perfect balance of labor and rest. The cities would be lively; there would be no change in the seasons, no harsh summers nor any cold winters. As long life would be assured, all men’s thoughts would grow similar—there would be one language and no borders to restrain people from going wherever they wished. In that far-off time, men would live two hundred years, three hundred years, or longer, and be able to travel to the moon and among the stars as they wished.
This was the true promised land, the land of the gods for which mankind had been searching for an eternity. In time, they would call this Heaven. They would call it Paradise.
When Maitreya came down to the world of men, he would save the world by changing its very construction, its nature, so that it was in essence no different from the world of the gods. This was why people looked forward to Maitreya’s coming with such eagerness, even across such a long span of time—Maitreya was the promise of the Kingdom of Heaven. It was this one person who inspired the fervent belief that gave the Brahmin monks the power to capture people’s hearts. And yet the darker side of that faith, the fact that mankind would have to wait such an impossibly long time for its salvation, was also a reflection of the despair that lurked in the hearts of men.
All of that—the hope and despair, the yearning for a new world—was right here.
“Maitreya!” the prince shouted toward the massive form. “Maitreya!”
There was no answer.