by Paul Anlee
Perfect that we’re here, inside the Void. The Eater had absorbed whole planets, a star or two, and countless tons of interstellar gas. When this thing slams back into the universe of real matter at near light speed, the shock wave is going to be equivalent to a supernova. I want it far away from everything. Isolating the explosion with eight million light years of empty space should suffice.
Darak could feel the dual fields extending from the array elements: one to dissolve the odd combination of static fields that had given rise to the Eater in the first place, and the other to shift the returning matter far away.
The fields enveloped the Eater, they became one with it, moved with it.
Now!
The dark cloud disappeared from the galaxy, and the light of Eso-La’s sun became visible straight ahead. The tiny, glittering speck against the endless black of deep space outshone the other dim stars of the ESO galaxy. It was one of the most beautiful sights Darak had seen in eons.
Eso-La’s ringworld was too faint to discern from this distance, but he knew it was there. His people—his rebels—were safe.
Millions of light years away, the collective matter of the several suns absorbed by the Eater along its journey materialized all at once in dark space, moving at near light speed.
Space around the mass strained and bent, resisting motion. Matter collapsed inward and then exploded outward in a brilliant release of energy. Millions of years would pass before anyone noticed the bright, new light in the sky.
Standing alongside Darak on the surface of Secondus, the shell of a man that now housed the mind of Darian Leigh examined his feet and the worn chunk of asteroid on which he stood. His eyes took in the scattering of stars in the heavens above. His lips moved but no sound carried in the vacuum.
Of course, no air—the man thought, and wondered how he knew that. Searching his mind, he found he also knew a way to communicate without speaking.
He turned to the man standing beside him and transmitted a single question over a local microwave channel.
Where am I?
Reality Assertion-Part1
Deplosion Chronologic: Book 6
Paul Anlee
Darian Publishing House
Chatham, Ontario, Canada
For every subtle and complicated question, there is a perfectly simple and straightforward answer...which is wrong.
- H.L. Mencken
1
“We grow impatient. Alum must be stopped!” Glenchax’s voice shook the pillars and bounced off the star-encrusted ceiling of the Hall of Thrones.
Four of the other five Gods bellowed agreement.
Raytansoh, the fifth, monitored passively, as had been his way for ages. His avatar—anonymously dark and vaguely humanoid like all the others—said nothing, signaled nothing.
Skeptical, Darak sat forward and arched an eyebrow.
“You said, ‘We’. Does this mean you’re finally talking to one another?”
The guffaws and scoffing that erupted across the five active channels suggested that this most certainly was not the case.
Ishtgor was the only one who bothered to put words to his contemptuous snort.
“I’m sure Glenchax merely extrapolated our consensus from previous conversations,” he explained. “I don’t believe any of us has developed a sudden trust in the independent communications links you provided.”
“My quantum-encrypted, entangled channels are secure,” Darak assured the group.
“But not as secure as the extra filter provided by communicating through you,” Ishtgor contended.
Darak sighed. He was glad they trusted him but there was no need to funnel everything through his personal lattice. The links he’d provided them were more than adequate for simple verbal communication, and the intentionally narrow bandwidth was too restrictive for anyone to sneak through a concepta virus.
On the other hand, the Gods did think in terms of eons. He supposed it was possible that one of the Six could inject a tiny, self-assembling worm a few bits at a time given enough years. It was highly unlikely but theoretically possible.
Ughh. Only the most xenophobic, paranoid beings would believe that talking directly to one another would pose any serious risk.
Unfortunately, xenophobic and paranoid described these Gods perfectly.
He referred to the Six as Gods, not gods, adopting the blanket capitalization when he’d first approached them. Capitalization seemed a fitting gesture. After all, when discussing beings with the power to alter the fabric of reality, there was no such thing as a minor deity.
Oddly enough, as supremely powerful as they might be within each of their own domains, they were terrified of encountering others like themselves. They insisted on keeping their individual locations, identities, and species a tightly guarded secret. The only way he could get them to agree to meet was by letting them project avatars, virtual representations of themselves, into a neutral territory.
Darak pushed on.
“In any case, my plans on how to deal with Alum are moving forward at an acceptable pace,” his translator routines relayed to each of the Six in his or her preferred language.
“Yes, about those plans—you haven’t shared many details with us,” Glenchax pointed out. “Every time we raise the question, you refuse to divulge specifics. So, I ask again, exactly how are you going to deal with Alum’s supposed Divine Plan to destroy the universe and recreate it in His personal vision of Heaven? And I’m warning you, I’m in no mood to be placated with evasive talk.”
Darak suppressed his impatience. They’d danced around and around this issue countless times.
In truth, I hardly know what I’ll do, myself—Darak admitted, but only to himself. It made no sense to share his uncertainty with them.
For the thousandth time, doubt crept in. Had it been a mistake to pull this group together? Herding house cats was a challenge. Herding intransigent, skittish wildcats with the powers to alter the laws of nature was proving practically impossible.
How much can I rely on them for decent advice? And for sane action?
The light over Ishtgor’s station glowed.
“You haven’t even told us where this Realm of humans is,” he complained.
It was true. Darak had resisted giving up the location of the Realm, and for good reason.
“You know I can’t expose all of humanity to the possibility of an attack,” he reminded Ishtgor, “any more than you’d want me to open you to attacks from them or from each other’s empires, for that matter.”
“Perhaps it would be more—shall we say, effective?—to simply tell us how to reach Alum. Then, we can all deal with Him together,” Glenchax suggested.
“I will reveal that when it becomes relevant to our actions,” Darak said.
Not that it would matter—he thought. Where exactly is a broadly distributed consciousness like Alum physically located? Could one pinpoint precisely where He could be found? The answer was something along the lines of everywhere and nowhere, all at once. It could well prove impossible to pin Him down.
He found it telling that each of the Six had opted for the security, comfort, and simplicity of a single physical embodiment to house their considerable minds, however big that resultant “body” might be. Depchaun’s physical manifestation was the largest, boasting a girth the size of Neptune.
Alum had been smarter than that. He’d chosen a distributed existence with multiple redundancies. It was a formidable form.
No sense getting into that with them; better to redirect the conversation.
“Anyway,” Darak continued, “who’s to say Alum couldn’t defend Himself and come after you if any of you were to attack?”
“What, turn the tables? Against all six of us at once?” Ishtgor sputtered.
Darak’s eyes shifted to the conspicuously inactive member of the group, whose blinking amber light above an inert avatar was the only indication that the sixth God, Raytansoh, was listening.
“The last ti
me I checked,” Darak corrected, “only five of you contribute to these meetings.”
“Still, that’s five Gods against one!” Ishtgor snapped back.
“I keep telling you, Alum’s Realm is larger and more powerful than any of yours. You won’t even risk exposing your empires to each other; you certainly don’t want to give Him a direct link back into each of your territories.”
Depchaun’s eyes, or more correctly his avatar’s eyes, narrowed.
“We have only your word on this, Darak Legsu,” he stated quietly and matter-of-factly. The undertone of simmering menace was unmistakable.
“True, but let me put it into perspective for everyone. By now, you all have some idea of my capabilities, yes? Okay. Well, relative to Alum, I am a mite.”
“In fairness, we have little measure of your capabilities and even less of your temperament,” Glenchax argued. “We know that you have a history of recklessness to the point of being irresponsible and yet, when it concerns Alum, your caution paralyzes you.”
Darak stepped off his throne and paced into the middle of the floor. His eyes roamed over the elegant, fluted columns separating the meeting area from the dim-glow of space beyond, and he took in the gentle, gold-hued light radiating from the ceiling onto the six charcoal-colored, human-shaped avatars that occupied the bejeweled thrones dotting the perimeter.
The Gods had wanted it this way; all of them had chosen to reflect Darak’s human form for these meetings rather than give away their true species and identities.
Good grief. As if finding them at all, creating an entire, tiny universe designed especially for our gatherings, and offering up this glorious Hall of Thrones replete with every sign of wealth and power one might hope to appease any Supreme Being weren’t enough to demonstrate my capabilities! What more will it take to satisfy their egos, quell their doubts, and calm their fears?
He peered into the galaxy inlay on the floor. It contained actual star stuff, made possible by enhancing a weak nuclear force in this micro-universe. Past the edge of the meeting room, there were galaxy-spanning clouds of gas, dimly glowing factories for new stars. Their thrones were diamond-encrusted, velvet-cushioned, obsidian slabs from another place, held artificially stable in this universe He’d custom engineered so they could feel relatively comfortable, safe, and untraceable. He’d provided them with private, secure, encrypted channels. What more would it take? Would they every trust him enough to move forward?
Darak lifted his head and answered Glenchax’s challenge.
“It was through my irresponsibility, as you put it, that we have come together here at all.”
“I’ll give you that,” Depchaun conceded. “Your reckless journeys to our various regions of the universe alerted each of us to the presence of others like ourselves. The unfortunate result is that you know all about us, while we know almost nothing about you except what you’ve allowed.”
“It might have been better if you’d never come,” Lyv chimed in.
Darak faced her. “Perhaps. And then you, all of you, would have basically disappeared, one-by-one, as the field generated by Alum’s Deplosion Array overwhelmed your defenses. You wouldn’t have seen it coming. You would’ve had no warning and no idea what hit you. Would the universe be any worse off if I’d played it that way?”
He looked around the room and shrugged in answer to his own question.
Lyv emitted a harsh laugh.
“Darak Legsu, you bait me with your theatrics, but they have no power.”
Darak sensed the air shimmer around him. Was Lyv taking advantage of the moment to cast a field around him? Was she attempting to alter the nature of his reality? Or was one of the others probing for weakness, yet again?
He swept away the clumsy probe and glared at Lyv’s avatar.
“Be careful not to reach beyond what your eight poisonous appendages can easily grasp,” Darak warned.
Lyv gasped.
Her short, sharp inhalation echoed through the hushed Hall. Darak’s rebuttal had, against the convention of their meetings, revealed her arachnid nature to the others.
Useless information, but a hint that I could reveal more if pushed. Darak prepared for her rebuke.
Instead, she apologized. “I regret my expression of frustration. It is easy to forget that we are all equals here.”
Darak returned to his seat.
“More or less,” he countered and settled into the sumptuous cushion. “No matter. We’ve found common ground and a common enemy. Let us remain focused on our primary objective.”
Ishtgor grunted in agreement, “To kill Alum.”
Darak leaned back. “To stop Alum,” he corrected.
“By any means possible,” Ishtgor added.
“By any reasonable means,” Darak revised.
“Pahh! Semantics.”
“An important distinction,” Darak replied. “I will not destroy my species to prevent Alum’s Divine Plan. Nor will I leave my people defenseless and open to assimilation into any of your realms.”
“But we are Gods,” Glenchax protested. “Any species would be fortunate to find itself under our rule.”
Darak smiled. “I’m sure the humans would welcome your rule about as much as your people would welcome Alum’s rule.”
All five Gods protested at once.
He ignored the din, captivated by the blinking amber light over Raytansoh’s throne that had just changed to solid green. The Supreme Being who had not spoken in over ten thousand years cleared his throat for attention.
“Instead of this endless bickering among ourselves, perhaps we should find a way to work with this God, Alum,” Raytansoh suggested.
The ensuing silence was deafening.
2
Darya walked a few METERS down the grassy hill and gently punched a tree trunk.
“How can we possibly trust another God?”
Timothy pushed himself up from the coarse plaid picnic blanket.
Before he could take a step, Mary pressed her hand against his leg.
“Let’s give her a minute,” she said.
Timothy scowled at the restraining hand and raised his voice for Darya to hear.
“Darak Legsu seems completely trustworthy to me. He saved you from that Securitor. He saved the people of Eso-La from the Eater. Why wouldn’t we trust him, especially if he can help us against Alum?”
Darya—his friend, mentor, and host of this inworld meeting—picked at the rough tree bark.
Virtual tree bark on the side of a virtual hill—he reminded himself. Darya’s quark-spin lattice was providing this tranquil setting for the gathering of their minds.
“We’ll all be safer if we meet inside an environment I control,” she’d explained when she’d sent for them, “in a setting that I engineer, where it is impossible for anyone, including a God, to eavesdrop.”
Timothy had agreed but remained uneasy. “What if Darak doesn’t need to listen in? Couldn’t he intercept my concepta when my temporary Partial returns to my trueself? Couldn’t Darak glean our thinking that way?”
“Don’t worry,” she’d assured him. “Your Partial won’t return to the real world until we’ve come to a decision here as a group. And at the end of this meeting, only our group consensus will get reported to Darak and your Full selves, nothing else.”
Darya’s lattice not only provided the setting, it also hosted Timothy’s and Mary’s complex Partials, which she’d already outfitted with all of the relevant data. She was confident that any decisions their Partial personas made here would be acceptable to their Full selves.
Darya picked away a few more tiny bits of bark and let them drop.
“How do we know Darak isn’t a representative of Alum, or a Partial projection of the Living God Himself?”
“The monk believes him,” Mary offered, “and he’s been through a lot.”
Darya stopped harassing the tree and met Mary’s concerned gaze.
“The monk tells a story of how Darak single-hand
edly defeated a Wing of Angels. I can’t decide if that’s a feat to be revered or feared. If it’s true at all.”
Mary had no reply.
Darya kicked at the loose bits of bark that had accumulated at the base of the tree.
“What’s Darak doing travelling with a monk, anyway? Don’t you find that a little suspicious?”
Mary shrugged.
“If Darak were a manifestation of Alum in disguise, why would he travel with a member of his own Church? Wouldn’t that make us more suspicious?” she asked.
“Sure, but someone with Alum’s intellectual capacity would expect us to think that. The monk’s presence could also be interpreted as a sign that Darak is close to the Alumit. Or maybe his presence was no more than random, blind luck. Maybe Darak has nothing at all to do with the Alumit. There’s no way to tell.”
Timothy brushed some stray blades of grass from his pants and took a few tentative steps toward Darya.
“If Darak were Alum, or an ally of Alum, wouldn’t he have destroyed us by now?”
Mary closed the wicker flaps of the picnic basket.
“How can we hope to decode the reasoning of a God?”
Her eyes studied the grassy vista around them. She still had trouble believing she was here, free of Trillian, her captor and torturer. The experience had changed her. She’d abandoned her defiantly obese avatar in favor of one that featured hard angles and a trim, fighting-form. The new appearance reflected her frame of mind.
“All we have to go on are his actions and his words,” Darya replied, “and depending on our level of trust, those are open to interpretation.”
“Well, the man claims to have intimate knowledge of you, Darya,” Timothy hinted gently. “Perhaps you could find some common experience and cross check his word against your memory.”
Darya shook her head. “Nice try, but I don’t accept that this guy was ever my husband. I remember a colleague with that face and name. Nothing more.”
“Besides,” Mary added, “emulating someone’s face would be child’s play for Alum. This could be another one of His tricks.”