The Ghost of Sephera

by J. D. Tew

  ‘Theodore! Check this out!’

  ‘What is it?’ I asked.

  ‘Voltage regulators, capacitors, jumpers, headers and sockets! We are definitely inside a computer!’

  A column in the center of the room was carrying linear zips of core energy toward the ceiling. ‘Yeah, but what do we do? We need... like a command to enter or something right?’ I asked.

  ‘No. This thing knows we’re here,’ Lincoln said. ‘It’s moving.’

  The graphene walls began to close in around us until they were uncomfortably close, and then they suddenly shot outward, extending and latching, and fanning around us like an omni screen theatre. The surface of the walls was glossy, emanating light. Lincoln and I had our backs against each other, watching in awe as Eppa responded to our entry. She had to be composed of Dietons. Her walls were defying laws of physics.

  ‘I am ready,’ Eppa shouted with glee. She called out specifically for Lincoln. ‘Lincoln,’ she said, ‘your crummy disguise doesn’t fool me one bit. Please, revert to your normal form.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am,’ Lincoln said, and the “Sanjay” veneer dissolved as the Dietons swirled around, and before I could blink my eyes, there was Lincoln, back to being himself.

  ‘Splendid,’ said Eppa, imitating a British accent. ‘Just dandy.’

  Suddenly, tiny particles from the wall disconnected and started to squeal loudly as they surrounded us. We covered our ears. Then projected holographic imagery started to form slowly and carefully into an identifiable setting. We were in a holographic representation of my grandparents’ house. Lincoln and I walked up to a kitchen table that was very familiar to me, where we awaited our fate.

  ‘I remember this. What do we do now?’ Lincoln asked.

  ‘You’re the computer guy!’ I yelled.

  ‘This isn’t exactly your home desktop.’

  My grandmother walked in. My jaw felt permanently fixed open. ‘Boys, boys, what’s going on? Lincoln, nice to see you honey. How is your dad? Is he holding up okay?’ the Dietonic Laverne asked. Eppa wasn’t fooled by Lincoln’s disguise and had correctly identified his true self. We were in for a rude awakening.

  Lincoln looked at me with wide eyes, answering for me. He said, ‘Theodore is fine, Mrs. Crane, thank you for asking.’

  ‘Theodore honey, can I talk to you for a moment? Lincoln, help yourself to some milk and cookies.’

  Lincoln seemed to be calm, perhaps because Laverne wasn’t his relative, plus he had already experienced living with Dietonic replications. I however, was really freaked out. I got up from my chair and started walking, bewildered.

  ‘Theodorrrre,’ she said, sternly.

  ‘Oh sorry,’ I said, and touched the table to test it. The table was humming and warm, like the inanimate objects on Sephera. Eppa seemed as if it was an extension of Sephera; a satellite unit. It was very warm; I was sweating profusely.

  We walked into the next room, leaving Lincoln to eat some self-destructing cookies and milk. My grandmother Laverne was fiddling with an aged white doily on the dining room table; the doily had a slight tint of yellow to it, just as I had remembered it back on Earth. Just before she died, Laverne had fussed over it, saying she would replace it with a new one as soon as possible. Eppa truly was extraordinarily detailed, stripping the portrayal of my house—and my memories—down to the last painstaking detail.

  ‘Theodore, I never really understood what you see in Lincoln. Are you sure about him? Is he a good boy?’ I peeked around the corner, and Lincoln was minding his own business, and strangely enjoying the fake cookies.

  I remembered what Rozzy said about loyalty, and quickly I replied by saying, ‘Lincoln is my first true friend and I have faith in him. You’re not afraid of him are you?’

  ‘Afraid! Hahahah! I fear no one!’ Eppa’s true voice was revealed as she shouted. After the last word left Laverne’s lips, the graphene walls retracted and the images faded. Lincoln was suddenly standing next to me. Eppa was already toying with us. Maybe she knew I was there on my covert mission of deploying a virus bot, with the capability to enter her apparatus and end her legacy forever.

  ‘That’s it?’ Lincoln asked.

  ‘I don’t really know what we’re supposed to do in here,’ I said. ‘But I think that was the easy part. I think she has more to challenge us!’

  A door appeared in the black room, on the wall. When I reached for the handle to the door, the door self-destructed, smelling like the sulfur food I ate on Sephera. We exited through the empty frame in the wall and then carried on down a hallway, because there was no other avenue. Eppa was controlling our direction. I felt like I was in Zane’s funhouse at a carnival. After all, he designed Eppa. She was using Dietons to meddle with the surroundings, tricking our minds any way she could.

  At the end of the hallway was a single door. Suddenly, from behind us, there was a sliding and grinding sound; a wall suddenly lurched forward toward us, then gradually rumbled on in a monotonous manner. There were no bells and whistles this time, just a smooth monolithic approaching wall, as Eppa seemed pleasantly aroused. Her malevolent cackles echoed throughout, as magnified by the shrinking space.

  We were in a full sprint toward the lone door at the other end of the hallway. Lincoln sprinted effortlessly, as if he was not using a bit of energy to propel his body. Upon reaching the door, I frantically opened it and thousands of large moths flew toward us, flapping their rather large wings against our faces, but smartly enough, they swerved away from the rapidly shrinking room behind us.

  We stepped into the next room, just in time as the room behind us disappeared, as the two sliding walls met in the middle with a final thud.

  ‘It’s dark! I can’t see!’ Lincoln cried out, and I heard him step forward tentatively. Suddenly, Lincoln let out a blood-curdling scream, and I felt a sudden tug on my left arm as Lincoln desperately grasped at me.

  As it turned out, Lincoln and I had both tumbled off a narrow ledge into what seemed to be a giant bowl. We tumbled down into to the center of the concave floor, which was shaped like a spherical pit or emptied pool. The ceiling of the room consisted of glowing giant transistors, and the loud hum within reminded us of the time we had pressed our ears close to large computer hard drives of past days. Before our arrival, the giant moths had been resting at the bottom, but for every move we made, a moth would flutter upwards, only to burn against the giant scorching hot computer chipsets above, falling down and creating a pile of dust at our feet. It seemed that for every move we made, this wasteful process continued.

  The warm temperature of this pit was steadily increasing, and these moths were sticking to the sweaty sides of my face, twitching against my cheeks and the corners of my nose. I swatted them away, but there was no escaping this three-meter deep concave floor full of dead moths.

  ‘Yuck! This is disgusting!’ I shouted.

  ‘Am I supposed to be grossed out by these moths?’ Lincoln asked. I remembered he loved bugs while a teenager on Earth, but even so, he was behaving oddly. He was still thinking from a Sepheran viewpoint.

  ‘That’s the normal reaction,’ I said.

  Lincoln started screaming shrill like a damsel in distress, mocking the entire situation. I started laughing, and I felt more emboldened.

  ‘Eppa! This is crazy!’ I shouted.

  ‘You’re the one who chose to enter,’ Eppa said, laughing mischievously again.

  ‘Why this room?’ Lincoln asked.

  ‘The Sepheran wishes to participate?’ Eppa asked.

  ‘Sure. I’m game,’ Lincoln said.

  ‘This pit is full of moths and every step you take, a life is extinguished. Sounds familiar?’

  ‘Thanks, not very helpful.’ I muttered to Eppa scornfully. I turned to Lincoln. ‘Lincoln, maybe we can run up the sides, like a vert ramp. C’mon, let’s get up there,’ I suggested.

  I ran, crunching my feet against dead moths, then jumping to latch my fingers over the top of the wall, but it was useless. Aft
er several tries, I was resigned, pulling moths out of my shirt that were burrowing under my armpit. ‘Lincoln, I think I’m going to need your help.’

  ‘You’ll have to hoist me up because you’re taller,’ Lincoln said.

  I lifted him up, realizing that hoisting Lincoln was like bearing the weight of a dirt bike on my shoulder. Extremely heavy, he was causing me to strain. ‘Lincoln, can’t you make this easier by dissipating? You know? That thing you do when you change into dust and fly around?’

  ‘I don’t know if I want to do that in here. This place is not stable.’

  ‘Couldn’t you could just toss me up there or change into something! You’re Sepheran!’ I yelled, excited.

  ‘Sure, let’s give it a try.’ Lincoln was smiling, and I could tell he was entertained by this. He wanted to see if I could find a way out. He could just fly out if he wanted, but he was toying with me too.

  Lincoln held his clasped hands outward at waist level to hoist me up. However, every time I stepped onto his weaved hands, the Dietons scattered into particle form, causing me to stomp my foot in frustration against the concave floor.

  ‘Lincoln! Come on. Quit foolin.’

  ‘I didn’t do that on purpose. I think Eppa is controlling my Dieton micro-attachment sites.’

  ‘Let’s try it again.’

  We repeated the whole process and I fell again, this time landing in the center of the pool shaped floor as my face planted into the nasty pile of moths.

  ‘Damn you, Eppa!’ I finally hollered up, wiping the dirt from my sweaty forehead. ‘At least you can let Lincoln be Lincoln and stop interfering with us!’

  ‘Ohhh,’ Eppa shouted gleefully, ‘The human messiah is getting angry at last! How does it feel, Theodore, to be without any hope whatsoever? To reach a dead end, in the middle of nowhere?’

  ‘Well, if you’re going to use your Dietonic games against me, at least let Lincoln do his own, seeing that he’s created from the same stuff as you!’

  ‘Temper, temper. Do you really think Lincoln and I have a lot in common, Theodore?’

  I could see that Eppa was trying to goad me, and she was doing an exemplary job of it. Gritting my teeth, I said, ‘Just tell me what to do.’

  ‘Finally!’ Eppa roared. ‘It’s always nice to be asked. Do you know how many times visitors always beg something from me! They always take, never give. Very well. I’ll give you a clue now.’

  An electronic display blasted out the words, in English: ‘The key to freedom lies in the eyes of the believer.’

  ‘Hmm, what does this mean?’ Lincoln asked.

  ‘You’re the avid philosophy hound,’ I said.

  ‘I got it! You’re the key,’ Lincoln said.

  ‘Well, a lot of good that does.’ I replied sarcastically.

  ‘This is a matter of perspective. Who’s the believer? You! It’s in your eyes, which can be interpreted as your mind. It is only after believing that you are free, that you will be. Maybe it is worth a try.’

  It was peculiar riddle, but Lincoln’s logic was sound. I closed my eyes and imagined the bottom of the pit was gone. Then the floor started to become steeper and the dead moths fell out through a rapidly enlarging hole at the bottom. We started to slip.

  ‘Theodore, what did you do?’

  ‘I imagined there was no floor. Clever, isn’t it?’ I said, as we started to slide from the gradually opening floor. Lincoln and I were grasping hands until we started to fall.

  ‘I love you bro!’ I shouted.

  ‘Me too man!’ Lincoln yelled back. The moths that were still alive were flying alongside of us as we fell.

  Then we both shouted, ‘AAAAAHHHH!’

  Looking over at Lincoln, I noticed his typically slick hair was sticking straight up as we fell. He was simulating! His Dietons knew that his hair would be forced up from the force of the wind if he were human, so the Dietons simulated the physical response. It was cool.

  After falling fifteen feet, we tumbled onto a well-padded floor. As we got up to our feet—I was bruised, but of course Lincoln wasn’t—we saw numerous capacitor pillars in the bay room.

  It was a most byzantine room, a room of which the famed Earth artist M.C. Escher, who was revered for his mathematically impossible illustrations. Beyond a comfortable two-meter wide platform, the two of us were facing an abyss. The only way across the abyss was to take one of three paths, each in the form of steps along a staircase that led to nowhere but to a door on the other side. They all looked similar. Lincoln started walking toward one of the three staircases, until I grabbed him.

  ‘Slow down, Lincoln.’

  ‘What?’ Lincoln asked.

  ‘There is a theme. I know what to do.’

  ‘If we work together to solve this logic, we may be better off.’

  ‘Well, a wise king taught me that there are paths set out for us. The one that we choose is our path. Whatever happens, happens.’

  Lincoln paused for a moment, calculating, and said, ‘Fine, ladies first. Haha. I’ll take this path, because if what you say is true, then there is no wrong path.’

  I took my first two steps, with Lincoln following. Then, something bizarre happened, showing just how wicked Eppa was. We discovered that all the staircases were made of Dietons, and they worked hard to make sure that Lincoln could never follow me. As soon as I advanced ahead, the portion of the staircase in between Lincoln and me would disintegrate like snow powder, then the dissipating Dietons would form a new path for Lincoln, at a completely different angle. In other words, Eppa always indulged into trickery to ensure that Lincoln ended up on a different staircase than mine. Every time I looked over the railing to the bottom, it was pitch black below.

  Lincoln, exasperated by his inability to follow in my tracks, shouted out, ‘What do we do now, Theodore?’

  ‘Eppa wants us separated,’ I said, grumbling. ‘We can’t fight it. Let’s just finish taking our respective paths.’ We kept walking, and in less a minute, we both made it to our respective doors at the end of the room. Now that we were doing what Eppa wanted, she halted her optical illusions.

  ‘Now what?’ Lincoln shouted at me. He was only about fifteen feet away from me, but even that seemed like an insurmountable chasm.

  ‘We open the doors at the same time!’ I yelled.

  ‘Got that!’ Lincoln yelled back. ‘Let me know when!’

  ‘Alright! On the count of three, we open our doors! One, two, three!’

  Just go with your gut, I thought and opened my door.

  Lincoln was gone, completely out of sight. When I entered in the middle of an octagonal room, there was a fluorescent red ball situated upon a pedestal. I walked over slowly and cautiously. I was worried some poisonous darts would shoot out of the wall or a ramming log would swing from a rope to destroy my skinny bones. The sides of the octagonal room glistened from the pink light that glowed from that fluorescent red ball. The door behind me shut slowly and melded with the wall.

  ‘Theodore,’ Eppa said.

  ‘You know me?’ I asked.

  ‘I do. Please step forward.’ The voice of Eppa was casual and cool. Her tone was now soothing and delightful, a switch from her mischievous manner earlier.

  ‘Who are you?’ I asked.

  ‘Often I am asked that question, and immediately I wonder... you purport to be Earth’s messiah, which is a very special honor. You were the Chosen, Theodore. I can see why, at first instance. However, it is afforded only to the best, those who are able to grasp their circumstances, and not only lead armies, but also be of pure conviction. Now, given that you are supposed to be a messiah, do you feel that your character, your courage, your very essence, was deep and profound enough in order to have earned this distinguished title?’ She sounded disappointed, and I wasn’t sure why. Was I being tested again?

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Here you are, one of the few fortunate enough to have made it this far. And I have graciously allowed you to ask me an insightful q
uestion, something that delves into matters of the deepest mystery in the galaxy. Yet, you just asked me, ‘who are you’ and now I feel pity, because you are so naive. I am very disappointed in you.’ Her voice started rising in indignation. ‘I am Eppa! I am not a person. I am a thing. I am a collection of everyone and everything.’

  ‘Excuse me,’ I said, boldly asserting myself. ‘I just asked the most respectful question imaginable, in order to learn about you, and…’

  The floor started to shake, and a trap door opened under my feet as the floor’s Dietons started disappearing upon Eppa’s commands. I fell through the hole that engulfed me, but managed to grab what was left of the floor. I peered down for a second; a bottomless pit lay below.

  ‘Interesting. You have courage, but disrespect doesn’t suit you. Now, I can see why you were chosen. I am Marvin Crane. I am—Laverne Crane. I am Karen Royce. I am everything and everyone. Everything that the collector Dietons gather across the galaxies is mine. I store all of it here in my myriad of databases.’

  ‘Please, I can’t hold on any longer.’ My fingers were growing numb from holding on to the edge of the hole. My body was starting to convulse against the prospect of death, seconds away. I frenetically tried to think of a question that would command the respect—and the reprieve—of Eppa. Then I had it.

  ‘Tell me who chose me then,’ I begged. ‘You said you could see why I was chosen. By whom was I chosen?’ I ask. Instantly, thousands of Dietons re-assembled to form a hovering platform underneath my feet. As I released my sore fingers, this platform soared incrementally through the air, ensuring I wouldn’t fall as it lifted me back to safety. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘You mean to tell me you don’t know who chose you?’ Eppa laughed playfully.

  ‘You did,’ I said, as I stood. ‘You chose me, and Zane just looked it up from you.’

  The sounds of clapping reverberated throughout the hollow chamber. ‘Very impressive, Theodore. Yes, I am the source of everything, and the end of everything. Had you answered Zane or King Trazuline, as I briefly suspected you would, that would have been the end of you.’