Reborn (Frankenstein Book 1)

by Dean C. Moore

  “Yes, yes, I know. He’s impervious to my mandala magic. What do you think I’ve been doing up here all day, playing with myself?”

  “Hate to say it, but that does kind of look like what you’ve been doing.”

  “I’ve been using my mandala magic to track the guy. If he’s on this planet, there ought to be nowhere he can hide from me. Anyone crosses the energy lines running through it, I’d know instantly, better than a spider when a fly flew into its web.”

  Soren nodded, his eyes glazing over, ironically, with understanding. “So that’s how your mandala magic melded so magnificently with my chi magic. I should have realized. You can feel the chi lines, at least enough to navigate by them.”

  “It’s like the guy just isn’t here, I tell you.” Victor wandered over to his window-wall overlooking the city. “Still, there’s no denying his presence by other means.”

  “He’s a master of oblivion.” Victor turned sharply to face Soren on the pronouncement, startled. “Or so I’m told.”

  “Tell me what you know; tell me everything.” Victor set the glass down as if he were no longer interested in drinking himself silly.

  He was evidently too weak to pull the information out of Soren’s mind, or he would have. That or he was saving what energy he had remaining for the Tillerman.

  “The Armageddon sector… they’ve been meditating on hell worlds all along to help them ride out our inevitable descent into one or another realm of Dante’s Inferno. According to their most powerful wizards, that’s what these guys are called. They’re the ones not even hell could hold on to.”

  “Thanks. I’ll take it from here.” Victor was already surfing an onramp arcing to the sky constructed of his interlinked mandalas, the energy veins pulling him directly to the most powerful of the Armageddon Sector wizards; or at least that was Soren’s guess. Whatever Victor needed to know, he was going to get it straight from the horse’s mouth, not secondhand.

  ***

  Victor scrutinized the wizard before him. “Christ, if you’re what passes for a master wizard in these parts, God help the rest of them.” The man before him had no skin, and the rest was under such savage attack by bacteria that not even a body buried without first being embalmed could manage a state of decay quite this putrid without exploding from the trapped gases. As it was, he was bloated, and pus oozed out of too many parts of his body to count. Green mucus hung from his nose as if it were just too sticky to be much impressed by gravity.

  The long-haired wizard continued pouring his tea, not the least bit startled by Victor’s sudden appearance. Victor was confident the hair was a wig. Amazingly enough, he was still not beyond some vestiges of vanity.

  His host flicked off the gas burner on the antiquated stove that went all-too-well with the peeling linoleum floor, and the depression-era décor, all salvage yard finds, not that Victor was any expert on the subject. The Armageddon sector had an unrivaled take on basse couture. The decrepit wizard’s digs were probably what passed for high living.

  “Figured you’d be paying me a visit,” his host said. “I’d offer you some tea, but some might think that rude, being as it’s hemlock.”

  “Seriously, my demented friend, you give zombies a good name. What on earth could make you want to hang around End Times looking like that?”

  “It’s not about holding on to life, or fear of death. Just the opposite. It’s about not getting too attached to anything.”

  “You look pretty attached to me—to this End Times drama of yours.”

  His host laughed cancerously, hacking intermittently, and then sipped his tea. “Consider this the last tether. When I let go of this one, I will truly be free. Even of the likes of you.”

  “That’s why I’m here, as I’m sure you guessed. These masters of oblivion… . I can’t even find them, far less cage them.”

  His host laughed. “You still don’t get it, do you? Your kind—the mandala magicians—have been ruling over all of creation for all of time. Who do you think built hell, anyway? Who but one of you guys would have the necessary skills?”

  Victor’s eyes had wandered from their mark, taking in the revelation. And he thinking he was the first of his kind to alight on such a bright idea. “You’re saying the mandala magicians gave rise to the masters of oblivion, the Houdini-types that could escape any lock box of time and space?”

  His host laughed. In so doing he spit up more of his innards. “Oh, they aren’t the only ones who’ve learned to get around you over the course of eternity.”

  Victor’s eyes were wild—he knew because he could no longer focus them. The blood rushing to his head… . He was surprised he hadn’t blown a blood vessel.

  His host laughed some more, a pitying, self-satisfied laugh. “Well, you wanted to play with the big boys. My guess is they’ve already got a fix on you and are arduously at work trying to instill some humility in you. They’re showing you if you have this much trouble getting around just one of these guys, imagine what they can do to you by sending them all at you at once.”

  Victor could feel his head ready to explode. His own mandala magic was probably the only reason he hadn’t. He thought he was playing the celestial wizards; now he came to find out, they were playing him. Evidently they shared Soren’s agenda, hoping to humanize him over the course of his ascent to master of the multiverse of multiverses. That way they had at least a chance of ending up with a benign despot rather than a complete megalomaniac. He hated to say it, but their approach was smart. If the shoe was on the other foot, he’d likely have tried the same approach. Of course, knowing what they were up to, just made him want to get around them all the more.

  Bringing his eyes back to the wizard, Victor said, “I know you don’t have any reason to help me, but how do I thrash these guys?”

  “Oh, but you’re wrong, I have all the incentive in the world. You think I worked this hard at non-attachment just so I could slip into oblivion with the rest of them, just to be free of the likes of you? My true reward is being able to enjoy all the realms, from the lowest rung of hell to the highest rung of heaven. Without attachment, that is my rightful reward. All of creation becomes my stomping ground.

  “But with the likes of you in charge, untempered, lacking true wisdom, well, it’s all the same hell-world, isn’t it? And it hardly matters much what my zip code is.”

  “Then enough with the preamble, old man. I’m weakening by the moment, and your loquaciousness may cost us all the match.”

  “I’ve told you all I can. The Houdini’s game I’m playing is the only one I know, the only one I ever considered playing. If there are other ways out of the traps of space-time it will be left to you to find them and close them.”

  Victor’s eyes dropped to the floor, but not to make it easier to think; he just didn’t have the energy anymore, the necessary hope, to face him.

  “If I had to guess, though… .”

  And just like that the hope was back. Victor’s eyes vaulted to the old man.

  “Your alter-ego hit on the solution already. You must learn to temper your magic by uniting it with other forms of magic. The synthetic approach is the path to ever-greater empowerment; not the atomistic, reductionist approach you’ve been using. To take the place of God—which, let’s face it, is what you’re contemplating—you need to embrace all forms of wizardry to hold the All together. Without the different colors of the rainbow, and the ability to coordinate all those flavors of magic into one orchestral whole—the manifest world collapses into the divine ground. There can be no form from formlessness. But this goes against everything you are.

  “This, I suspect, is the nature of the tests that will befall you. Every type of wizard will look to vanquish you until you value them as you value yourself. But this is a game you can only win by losing. Can you get your mind around that paradox? If not, we are all doomed.”

  Victor snorted. “For a man with no more answers for me, you seem to have them all. You’re right, what you’re sug
gesting goes against everything that I am. The greater the obstacle, the more determined I am to get around it.”

  “Then get around it—the only way you can.”

  “I’ll not have my path set for me. I’ll set it myself or there will be hell to pay.”

  “There already is.” The old man raised his hand in a stilling gesture when he sensed Victor about to depart. “Don’t you see? A mandala magician, focused on his sacred geometries— how like the man who drafts the blueprints for a building you are. Without all the other specialties, the building itself cannot be built. You’re not the highest of the high, you’re the lowest of the low. Your task is the easiest. Yes, it’s within your power to destroy the blueprints, but the price on all creation is that it crumbles. And no amount of magic can stop that.”

  “Don’t think I won’t do it; don’t think I won’t yank the blueprints.”

  “Of course you will, that’s how your kind always wins, in the end. There are always those who will settle for tyranny over being reunited with the Godhead. A sad truism, I’m afraid. Now you just have to ask yourself if you wish to be a king of kings in a world where the sycophants are the only ones left. Look around you, these are what the last ones standing look like. Not exactly a merry lot of fools, are we? That’s your inheritance.”

  Victor wanted to disintegrate him as much as look at him. But he needed to conserve his energy so he had some moves left to make on this game board; even if he didn’t yet know what those were.

  SEVENTEEN

  Victor zoomed back to his penthouse. When he got there, he found Soren waiting for him. “Didn’t expect you to loiter. Shouldn’t you be searching out your family? Or is suicide just looking like too attractive of an option?” Considering Victor had found him at the lip of the window-wall, which he’d forgotten to restore on his way out, it was a fair question. Victor waved his hand and restored the “shatterproof” glass panes.

  “You’re my family, too, Victor.”

  Victor snorted. “Nice try, but your rhetoric won’t work on me.”

  “I get it. You’re mad. You obviously didn’t get the answers you wanted, but that doesn’t mean we can’t find them together, as we recently have.”

  Victor was already pouring from his decanter. “That’s what he said, Armageddon’s sage of sages. Only by combining my magic with others could I truly find my way free of this trap; just the first of many they’ve built for me.”

  “They? Oh, I see. All this time you thought you were playing them, but the big boys were playing you.” Soren took the glass out of Victor’s hands before he could drink from it, emptied it on the floor, along with the contents of the bottle. “Not like you to give up, Victor, and this is giving up.”

  “Go on, get out of here before I exorcise my wrath on you the way I was tempted to do with the old man.”

  “We’ll get each other out of the trap, Victor. I don’t believe in forcing enlightenment down anyone’s throat. If there are any who can find another path through the maze, it’s the two of us.”

  “You really mean that, you’re not just saying it to…?”

  Soren grabbed the ridge of muscles connecting Victor’s neck to his left shoulder which were flexed from tension, squeezed hard, and shook him. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that more powerful wizards like yourself aren’t necessarily more enlightened. Some of them are the biggest assholes of all.”

  Victor snorted and smiled half-heartedly. “And the fact that they’ve forced you to play this game,” Soren continued, “they had to know that would provoke you. Hell, even I would have known better. So that tells me we’re not dealing with the more enlightened ones.”

  Victor smiled brighter this time, less half-heartedly. “So, the game’s afoot then, to see if I can find a way out of the trap before you. I like it when we try to best one another.”

  Soren pulled him close, kissed him on the forehead, then hugged him hard. He could feel Victor’s tension bleeding away. In some ways dealing with him was not all that different than dealing with Player; Victor was just a lot smarter, so Soren had to be a lot more subtle.

  EIGHTEEN

  Soren took the elevator down. He wasn’t up for navigating those stairs. If anything, his cough had only grown worse, and he felt more enervated than ever.

  He continued down to the basement despite Player’s proclamation. Something told him to check anyway. Either the spell that protected the basement had been altered to allow him in, now that he was part of the gang, or it had been dropped entirely—since he didn’t forget where he was going. Maybe the magic required a certain vivaciousness on the part of the spell caster to hold—an energy level no one had any more.

  Navigating Naomi’s lair made him sad. So much down here was boxed or crated up; the prizes inside hidden, much like the potential of her and her followers. A wizard’s mind was a terrible thing to waste, but it was no easy matter getting it to come to fruition either. There were the pitfalls of ego to be overcome, of course, low self-esteem, the usual cocktail of negative emotions. But the list of ingredients was far longer than that, and often more elusive, especially when it came to working off a recipe, only to find items were still missing to flavor the meal just right.

  “You’re in here, Naomi, I can tell. Though why you’re hiding from me remains a mystery.” He continued to feel his way about, recalling at last that she liked to be up high. So he scouted out the tallest stack of crates and climbed to the top. “So, am I sitting on your face yet? I just need to know if I should be appreciating the thrill or not.”

  She decloaked. She was all coiled up, her arms wrapped around her legs, bent at the knees.

  “I hate it when you do this mousey thing that you do.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m not too keen on being hunted. And this Tillerman guy is hunting us all.”

  “No doubt, if anyone can elude him, you can. But I have to ask myself why? Not much of an end game strategy, is it, to be the last person left on Earth?”

  “I’m immune to your logic. Even I know I’m being silly. I just can’t stop myself.”

  “I’m going to need your help if I’m going to defeat this guy,” Soren said.

  “I felt inside his mind, briefly. I’m still recovering, as you might guess. There is no beating this guy. The power… it’s boundless.”

  “They all have their Achilles heel.”

  “Why, because you say so?”

  “Because I have faith in a higher power that wants to be reunited with us all, but it really can’t do that until we accept that we’re one with it, inseparable, and so made of the same God-stuff, infinite, limitless, all-expansive, and yes, all powerful. Everything else is just a lie we tell ourselves. Because the truth of that is just too scary. Who could own that much omnipotence? You possess more of it than most of us, and look at what it’s done to you. But we’re all on the same path, Naomi, to become more fully who we are, and who we are, in truth, is God. Or the cosmic consciousness, whatever you want to call it.”

  She chuckled meekly. “You’re seriously deranged, you know that.”

  “I’m a chi master. We kind of specialize in communing with the Godhead. We were the original truthsayers, back when they called us truthsayers.”

  “No wonder you were burnt at the stake for such heresy.”

  “Yes, how far people will go to hide from the truth. You’re kind of a graphic example of that.” He held out his hand to her.

  “Fine,” she said, taking his hand, “but only because I’m getting cramped sitting like this, and not because I don’t think you’re demented.”

  “English by way of double negatives, I’m afraid, is beyond me in my current energy state. I’m guessing that’s for the best.”

  He led her off the stack of crates, forgetting about her ability to levitate. But she didn’t look like she remembered it either, as she didn’t rescue either of them from the torturous descent.

  When they were back on the floor, he said, “I need you to
power up just enough to help me find the kids. I don’t want them going through this alone, either. We need each other more than ever.”

  “I don’t know if I can, Soren.”

  “Sure you can. Because you’re even better at losing yourself in others than I am, remember? It’s a source of comfort for you. And we could all use a little right now.”

  She seemed to brighten at the thought. Soren was left to hope it was more than her mood that was shifting. “Player is with Natura at the park, where we… .”

  “Excellent,” Soren said. “Let’s get there as fast as we can.”

  “How? My powers are even less accessible to me than normal. Otherwise I’d… .”

  “Seriously? You can fly?” When she looked like she was afraid to come clean with yet another ability, he had taken a stab at what it might be.

  “I cannot confirm or deny. Especially since I can barely remember my own name right now.” She fainted and he had to catch her. He sent some of his chi energy into her. He had hold of the small of her back; the second chakra located there was as good a port as any. She revived in short order.

  Together they made their way to the street, and grabbed a taxi.

  “Where to, you two lovebirds,” the taxi driver asked as they climbed in the cab, turning about to face them, and throwing his shoulder over the front seat. “I’m afraid all the sectors are a bit of a haunted house ride today, but I can definitely recommend the Transhuman district. Worth a laugh or two if nothing else.”

  “Why?” Soren asked trying not to stare at the guy whose face was grossly disfigured, owing perhaps to a birth defect. His wide mouth ran at an angle, as opposed to being parallel to his chin. His two eyes were off-level too.

  “Ah, those guys,” he said with a dismissive wave. “Not even the end of the world is any excuse to stop inventing the future. Only now, it’s all about robots. They’re not so focused on upgrading us humans right now. The idea is to program the robots without any emotions this Tillerman guy can suck out of them, good or bad.”