Prisons of Stolen Dreams

by Christopher St. John Sampayo

  There the Monster would erase countless lives from existence. He would end life on a scale that only gods could comprehend. He would do so without hesitation. He would do so with cold precision. This is why he was a Monster. He was a Monster because life meant nothing to him. He could crush and exterminate life with the passion of an artist.

  As the Monster sat upon his throne he could see in his mind how one decision had a ripple effect that could change a multitude of events. Each of these different events existed in different points in space and time.

  For one such as the Monster it was never about the moment. It was about the next moment. The Monster did not live in the now. He lived in tomorrow. Because he was already ahead of all. He did not see the actions of today he only saw their consequence in the days to follow. This is the way it is with the purist geniuses. In truth the Monster King was the purest genius to ever exist. He was unencumbered by emotion. He was not held back by fear. He was cold and calculating.

  The Monster King sat in the dark. He sat upon his throne in silent meditation. From this point he observed all the patterns in the universe. He saw how the fate of existence hung in the balance of the events to come. The end of countless Verses began where he sat. It began at this throne. The moment he began his next course of action and stepped away from his throne ripples would occur that would determine the fate of the Multiverse.

  So, the Monster King sat in quite solitude awaiting the right moment. From that moment his movements would create the ensuing ripples that would lead the Monster to his goal.

  In his mind the Monster King began to focus on one pattern. He traced it over and over in his mind. That pattern was a path. It led to the Threshold. It led to the point where the Great Phage dwelt.

  The Monster knew there was one step at the right time that would set in motion the sequence of events that would bring him there. That moment would lead him to the heart and soul of creation. It would lead him to the Threshold of Degradative Concurrence. It would bring him to that point in existence where existence was dying.

  The Monster King knew he would reach this great nexus of death. It stood before him waiting. He could see the Threshold waiting for him in the future like a lover waiting for him to return home.

  When he reached the Threshold he would become in that instant more than a monster, and more than a king. In that moment he would become a God. He would be a great God. He would be a great and terrible god of death.

  The Monster could see all this before him like a frozen photograph. He could see every possibility. He knew how changing one variable one moment, changing one decision, would affect everything else that followed.

  The precision of the things he saw was enough to drive any sane man mad. But the Monster was not sane. And he was not really a man. He was different. He was already part God. Only God could see the map of the universe the way the Monster did. However, part of this God was also the Devil. The Devil killed. The Devil destroyed. The Monster knew there would be much death at his hands to open the path of the Threshold to him. He knew much death would follow when he reached there.

  When he reached the Threshold, beautiful countless masses would be extinguished. It would not just be the masses that existed, but the masses that would exist and had existed eons into the past.

  In his awareness the Monster saw the city of lost children on its ocean of glass. He saw the awful goodness they were trying to perpetuate. Her saw how he was greater than them. He understood more than they could ever hope to understand.

  The Monster smiled in the dark. He knew to reach his goal he would carve his way through the living and create a trail of blood. The Monster knew the path to the Threshold lay through the city on the Sea of Glass. It was ironic that they had sought the path to the Threshold for so long and did not realize they had already discovered it. He knew the diamond city would be his starting place to reach that great place beyond. His final journey started in that city of forgotten children.

  The Monster would move through the city and burn it to the ground. Many would die. That was part of nature. Death followed life. It was the ultimate eventuality. The Farinata who had lived in this dark city, in this dying Verse centuries ago made the people of this world understand the fundamental truths of death.

  The Monster was the accumulation of all of Farinata’s dark dreams. The Monster had been created to murder infinity.

  The people on the Sea of Glass were already dead. He was just going to hasten their deaths. He was going to murder the goodness in that place. It was what he must do because every monster has a purpose. They are defined by their actions. And though he was a monster close to a god he was not different in that respect.

  It all came down to the Threshold. It was the place where it all began and where it all ended. Once there for a single moment the Monster would have all infinity in his grasp. Once there he would be able to destroy it all. The fabric was already tearing. He could be the one to send it over the edge. That awesome knowledge made the Monster’s smile grow.

  The Monster sat at his throne tracing the fabric of time and space. He sat as one sits listening. In truth he was listening to the grand symphony of all existence. His mind was tracing each note. He was waiting for one moment in this great composition of the Multiverse to begin. He was awaiting the aria. The aria in a symphony is the moment when all fell silent and one voice takes over. That would be the moment when the Monster emerged to step forward and take control of destiny. He would step forward to begin his journey to the Threshold which awaited him.

  It was all timing after all, the Monster thought to himself. Music was timing. Any great maestro could feel the moment in the symphony when the crescendo was building.

  Then as the Monster listened to the great symphony of existence the Monster heard what he was looking for. The silence.

  The Monster opened his eyes. It was time for the aria to begin. It was time for the Monster to step forward.

  ***

  Outside a castle in a city under a frozen ocean sat the multitude of the insane masses of the city in the dark. They were on their knees paying silent homage to their savior. They knew he sat atop his throne in the tower at the center of the castle. They knew the great final moment was almost upon them.

  The people of this city had spent generations waiting for this day. Now they had their great and final King. He was a perfect computer fashioned from pieces of the mind. He was a machine designed for one goal. He was the final solution of their religious equation of death.

  As the people knelt in the streets below they sang songs of exaltation to their great king. They had been kneeling for twenty-seven days. They were waiting. They ate no food during this period. They drank no water. They simply knelt in adoration.

  One by one they were dying. Only the strongest remained kneeling in the streets. The rest had fallen over and died from dehydration or of hunger. Only the strong would remain to see their great leader begin his ascension and their final dreams as a people complete.

  Belili of the dark city knelt with them. Her lips were chap. Her body was weak. However, she was holding on. She was holding on to see the beautiful moment she had dreamed of for so long. The people of Null Verse had worked hard to build something pure and good. In truth they had worked hard to build this moment.

  As Belili in her exaltation thought of this she realized how subjective the term good was. It had a different meaning depending on which side of the mirror you are on. This creature they had created was good because he embodied all of the hopes and dreams of a civilization.

  She looked up at the tower and reflected on how the purity of her King’s cold calculation would never be equaled in all of creation. Their faith, their religion, had built him. He was their finest achievement. He was the pinnacle of a whole civilization. That it was a civilization built on the love of death was secondary.

  Civilizations can be built on various religions. They can be built on religions that taught that it was good to help thy neigh
bor. Religions could be built on love. Religions can be built on piety. They can be built on science. Or religions can be built on ending this existence for the beauty of what can come after.

  All things are born to die. That was the truth that Farinata had come to realize in their city in the dark. In order to live to one’s potential was to understand how and when things should meet their end.

  The denizens of the city created their Monster King of death out of love. Now their work was over. He was fully formed. Now they waited for him to set the great death of existence into motion.

  ***

  In the darkness of his tower throne the Monster King stood. The moment had arrived. The aria was ready to begin. The Monster understood that all the pieces were now in place as they should be. The Threshold of Degradative Concurrence lay before him. He must take his first step forward and set all into motion.

  The Monster took a deep breath. He let the knowledge of all that was about to occur in this great sequence of events wash over him. He stepped forward and in doing so set the actions of what was to come into motion.

  He moved forward in the darkened room. The shadows around him stirred. The eyeless faces of the dark prodigy children watched him. The insect like shells that were their bodies stirred. They clicked with delight as their King moved.

  Only one set of natural eyes followed the King’s movements in this chamber now. Dark Catalina was there. She was the doorway. The Monster had the abilities of a Prekoraciti but she was the one who could carry the assassin children to the shores of the Sea of Glass. There the Children of Noctis would erase the great beacon of life for the cosmos.

  The Monster went to the windows of his tower. He looked down upon those kneeling before his domain. Many of them were dead but those that were not saw him. He heard a cry of joy from the streets below as they saw him appear at the window. The cry of joy spread. Even those that were close to death felt the adrenaline rush of this moment. It revitalized them. They were witnesses to the great ascension that their entire civilization had strived towards. They were the blessed chosen ones who could bare witness to the beginning of the end of all there was. They would be witnesses as existence was ushered towards its death.

  The Monster touched the glass of the window. He was in a sealed chamber that had been designed specifically for this instance. The chamber had been designed before he was born. It had been designed for this final moment.

  The Monster King looked at his subjects. He was their messiah. He was their God.

  He looked down upon them and he bestowed his blessing. He did so by pulling the lever that stood next to the window.

  On the streets below a fog began to rise from the gutters and sewers. It was a fog that carried with it death. It was a gas that was specially designed for the moment of the great ascension of their savior. It was a fog that all the citizens of the city had aspired to be enveloped in. It was the great death for those who were blessed to be there in Multiverse’s final moments.

  Shrieks erupted in the streets. The shrieks were a strange mixture of agony and euphoria. The gas burned and blistered the skin and eyes. It was acidic and caused the hair to fall out. Nerve endings of the skin burned. However, with the great pain came great joy that the moment that a civilization had strived for had finally arrived.

  The gas had been specifically designed for the sacred selected few who would see the final moments as their messiah moved towards the Great Threshold of Degradative Concurrence. The gas had one final blessing in it. The gas carried with it agony.

  The citizens of the city in truth had been walking dead for generations. They had gone through the motions of life like automatons working for the greater good. They took little joy in their days. They merely fulfilled their duty. They felt no happiness in life. They felt no pain. They were numb.

  The gas changed all that. It allowed those it enshrouded to experience extreme suffering so they, for one last time, could feel alive. The tears that mixed with the blood that poured from their eyes were tears of joy.

  No one in the streets would survive the gas. The only survivors of this entire civilization were the ones selected by the Monster. They were the beautiful creature assassins and Catalina.

  With the release of the gas the great death of universes began. In the streets those that died painfully died happy. In their dying, burning, breaths they understood their work was done. It was the work of their parents and grandparents. It was the work of their ancestors long dead. These were their children and they had fulfilled what they had been destined to do. The pain was great but in truth the joy was greater.

  In the streets on her knees Belili ripped her glasses from her face. They were covered in blood. However, she wanted to stare unimpeded as long as possible at her beautiful savior who was killing her. She held on as long as she could to bask in the joy of the moment she had dreamed of for so long. Even when she could no longer see she stared in the direction of her king. Her skin was on fire from the gas but she still smiled in adoration. Her beautiful king had released the gas that was making her skin blister and peel. She was grateful to him for his existence. He would move now to the final threshold. He would usher in the great death. He and those hundred great dark prodigies he took with him were what this city in the dark had always dreamed would come to pass.

  The city had lived an eternity based on a cast system. The slaughterers were the elite. Then there was the meat. The meat understood their duty. They understood that their lives were to be sacrificed so their society could move forward. They toiled in their duties maintaining this dark underwater city in its frozen ocean. They did not question when a slaughterer arrived to exert his sacred duty. This was the true order and the true nature of their faith. They knew they were doing what was required of them. However, in this last moment in the streets the slaughterers and the meat were all the same.

  The gas continued its corrosive effect. As it burned through the skin it burned away the mind and the heart.

  In the midst of the horror as this city died many questions could be formed. As the minds of thousands of murderers dissolved one could wonder where did the true soul reside? The answer was in the mind of course. As the brain burned and as the heart corroded sparks of electricity in the mind continued to fire in the mush that was becoming the brain. However, could these random sparks of electricity in this mass of tissue that had once been a brain be called thought? Could they be called life? Did that mush with its random sparks any longer constitute a soul?

  The hearts of the citizens in the streets began to slow and cease their movements. However, the muscles of some continued to pump a bit longer. In this city in the dark full of killers, the heart beat for some after the mind was gone.

  These hearts beat a few more moments till finally they too were still.

  There was now utter silence in the streets of the dark city. Nothing moved. No hearts beat.

  From the top of his tower that had been created for him the Monster grinned. Is the word joy applicable at the site of such death? Does its value change? When does joy cross over to horror.

  The Monster wondered this as he stared into streets filled with bloody carcasses. Can one feel joy in horror? he pondered. Can slaughter be beautiful? If it could this city under a frozen ocean was where those ideas could cross and become one and the same.

  The Monster stared at the streets full of withering flesh for several minutes. However, in his mind a clock was ticking. He knew that there was timing to everything and to reach the Threshold timing was crucial.

  The Monster turned away from the window. All round him were his final disciples. They were his children now. They were the children of his civilization. They were the last remnants of what had once been a race of scholars that had become a race of murderers.

  He turned and saw them all on their knees before him. They were ready. They were ready for the next step. Now they must go to the city on the Sea of Glass. They must go to that awful city of goodness that sought to impe
de the work of God.

  The Monster began to trace the path in infinity that would ultimately lead to the Threshold. He could see the future unfolding in his mind’s eye like a memory. That memory was a map. That memory was a key.

  Now, as he closed his eyes and the waves started to erupt around him, the memory was a door. It was a door he created and Dark Catalina could use to bring the assassins with them to the beaches of the Sea of Glass.

  The Monster now heard his symphony begin all around him again. He could hear the music of each Verse as it began to die.

  The Monster stepped through the doorway and the assassins followed.

  ***

  The Philosophical Principles of Death. The Scripture of Farinata Uaegli Abertio.

  Gospel 000003

  The Path is our sacred mission. The Path begins with these scriptures.

  God sets us on the path to the Threshold.

  He leads us to the place of his will, where with Trishula, we shall complete this great endeavor which he has set us upon…

  Verse Nineteen: The Monster Triumphant

  On the beaches of the Sea of Glass, along the shores of the strange ocean of infinity, a large wave began to appear. The wave sent ripples along a section of the sea. These ripples then froze. It was like watching an ocean become a glacier. For a moment this frozen segment of the Sea of Glass reflected the City of Adar in the distance.

  This frozen section of the Sea of Glass began to crack. First one crack appeared then many. It gave the appearance of a mirror shattering. However, the image that now appeared in the frozen wall did not reflect what was. As the mirror cracked it began to reflect what could have been. Each shard of broken reality, which was so much like a shard of glass, was a fragment of a universe. It was a fragment of a place that existed where different choices and decisions were made.