Prisons of Stolen Dreams

by Christopher St. John Sampayo

  Sarah moved with maddening speed. However, in each Verse she was able to gather the memories of who she had been. She lived a thousand lives in a matter of minutes as she blindly jumped from one place to another. Sarah was jumping through different lives so quickly that she almost got lost in who she was. Who had she ever really been? Who could she have been with so many different outcomes that did occur? Her mind and her essence were strained to the limit.

  However, she kept jumping. She would not give up.

  She had flash after flash of Verse after Verse. She lived life after life in an instant. She kept falling back. She did this over and over again. She would lose the Monster, she told herself. She was certain of it.

  Suddenly in the insanity of endless lives she found hope. She had jumped through so many different Verses that even she was lost. This randomness would save her. Even his mind could not follow this course that was taking her instantly through Verses of infinity. She would lose him.

  Her mind smiled. She fell back and fell back again.

  Then…suddenly, as she tried to fall back, she found she could not.

  No new memories washed over her. She was the same Sarah who had been raised in a city of child artists and philosophers. Something was very strange. Sarah felt an odd sensation like she was floating. She had kept her eyes closed in all the endless jumps.

  Now she opened them.

  Sarah was surrounded by light. She was floating in it.

  She looked down at her hands. They were flickering. They flickered like flames. Sarah realized she was staring at the illusion of herself. She had never really existed. She was atoms held together by electromagnetism. Sarah was merely an idea that these atoms, molecules, and cells formed a vessel that was a person. That was really an illusion. In the subatomic world there was not a Sarah.

  Somehow her mind’s energy was keeping this constant fluctuation stable. This mass of atoms was Sarah. It had a conscious.

  Sarah heard a sound. She turned and in this world of liquid light there seemed to be a window that appeared. She saw a city street. A young girl was running down the street. She saw Sarah and ran towards her.

  She was screaming as she did so. Sarah realized that she was not staring at a window. She was staring at a tunnel. The girl was running towards Sarah through the tunnel. She reached out towards Sarah.

  Suddenly the girl screamed again. Her body began to decay. She withered and died before Sarah’s eyes. She was pulled back into the tunnel she had been trying to escape. Sarah saw through the tunnel that the girl’s world was also withering and decaying. The buildings in that world fell. The grass dried and burnt. The world shriveled into itself and died.

  Beside Sarah another tunnel appeared. This time it was a man who ran towards Sarah. He was running for dear life. He ran past Sarah. Sarah could see terror in his eyes. He too suddenly cried out in agony. His body began to decay yet he continued to run. He continued to run as his body began to shrivel and his clothes became strands of fabric. Though his body decomposed at an accelerated rate he was still alive. He screamed from the pain of his bodies death. The world he lived in followed him. It was as if the man was contained by his world the way a figure might be contained in a snow globe. The globe then cracked and crumbled in upon itself.

  Sarah saw another movement in this strange environment. It took her a moment to identify what it was. Sarah realized she was seeing a horse. It was galloping through the light. Sarah was amazed to see upon its head was a horn. In an instant Sarah realized this creature was from a Verse where unicorns lived. They had been dreamt of in other Verses, but somewhere in the Multiverse they had been more than just a dream. The horse screamed as its body began burning away in a black fire. Then it too faded.

  Sarah studied her surroundings and saw that in this world of light there were stars. Some of them were dark stars.

  Sarah felt a cold dread wash over her. Slowly she turned.

  That is when Sarah, for the first time, saw the great death.

  She stood before a creature. It was organic. It was not organic. It was made of silicon and carbon based at the same time. It morphed and it changed before her eyes. At one point it took on the bizarre structure of a virus. Then Sarah saw a wing emerge from it. The wing was like that of a moth. The wing flickered then was pulled back into the creature’s body. A moment later a tentacle emerged from its torso. After that eyes appeared. They were formless eyes. Sarah knew there was no conscious behind those eyes. If there was a conscious it was not a conscious like Sarah could ever hope to comprehend.

  Sarah understood where she was. She was at the Threshold of Degradative Concurrence. Before her stood the Phage. It was reaching out into the cosmos and slowly erasing everything.

  Sarah flickered because she was in a quantum state of constant fluctuation. These people she was seeing were probabilities of people who could have been, but now never were. They had not found the Phage. The Phage had found them and erased them from having ever existed.

  This was the center of the great plague that was killing all creation. This was the cancer eroding all of existence. As she watched it, the Phage’s tendrils and appendages spread out and ensnared other points of creation. Sarah wondered how many points of existence had already died along the branches of this cancer. How many possible could have beens no longer were? All around Sarah were the screams of dying infinities.

  Sarah then heard something even more terrifying then the screams of the dying. She had heard the sound before. She heard it when she was on a beach with her great love and a Monster had come to kill him.

  It was the sound of reality being strained then shattering. Sarah was a fool to think she could escape the Monster’s grasp. He had followed her. Worse than that horror though was the realization that in her chase she had led him to this place. She had led him to the Threshold where all infinity was converging.

  Sarah turned. From the broken glass of reality before her the Monster stepped forward on to the plane of decay that was eating away all of existence.

  As he did so his eyes were dazzled at the site before him. His brilliant mind dazzled at the complexity and beauty at the center of un-creation.

  He let out an audible sigh.

  His next words were genuine.

  “Thank you, Sarah,” the Monster said. “Thank you for leading me here.”

  He looked to her and a smile erupted over his face though his eyes remained cold.

  Sarah realized a truth in that moment. The Monster would never have found this place on his own. He had not been the one destined to find the Threshold of Degradative Concurrence. All this time Sarah had been the one. In her selfish desire for self-preservation she had led him here.

  Now the Monster stood at the point where the death of all existence could be hastened.

  He still carried his blade with him.

  The Monster approached the center of the end of all creation. The creature of death approached the ultimate killer of life.

  Verse Twenty-One: The End of Space, The End of Time

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

  Gospel 000001

  Blessed is the final moment of creation.

  Blessed is the Threshold.

  Blessed is the Phage created to devour all of infinity.

  Blessed is the chosen one who comes to deliver us from the shackles of life, from the shackles of suffering, from the shackles of agony.

  Blessed is the one who erases the pain or our present life and who erases all the suffering we have known from our past.

  Through the chosen child of God, the pain of what we have witnessed and endured will become a dream that never existed.

  Blessed is the one who will send us into a new state where pain and suffering no longer exist...

  ***

  The Monster moved across the plane that was at the heart of death for all existence. For the first time his eyes began to show true emotion as he stared at the great Phag
e. The Monster’s eyes shimmered with something like delight.

  Sarah watched his movements with horror. She understood that all creation was now on a precipice. Existence was teetering on the abyss and now that the Monster was here he could push it into darkness.

  Sarah studied the face of the Monster which she knew had the mind of a boy she had once loved. His face was withered and aged as one would expect the face of a monster to be. Sarah knew the atrocities witnessed by him through countless lives could drive a person insane.

  Around them the dance of undoing continued. They were in a forest of dying Verses. In a horrific way it was beautiful. It was a dance of life and death. It was the dance of things which dreamed of existence but that dream was not real. It never had been. The things in this place were just dreams.

  Sarah saw that the Monster too understood this.

  The Monster’s eyes focused on the Phage. The Monster, had seen this moment in his thoughts his entire life. He had dreamed of the probability of him being the great one to reach the Threshold. As he stared at the thing before him he marveled at its beauty. It was the perfect death.

  The Monster’s mind could find no flaw in its design. It was the perfect creature of undoing. It was part organic, part crystal. It was part virus, and part fire. As he stared at this point of undoing it faded in and out of view at times. The Monster understood this was because it existed and did not exist. It was a virus at the core of eternity infecting all of reality with non-existence.

  The Monster looked to his side. He saw the images of the realities dying around him as the creature spread out and infected itself into other points of the Multiverse. His eyes turned back to the perfect cancer of creation.

  “It’s beautiful,” he said. “Everything has a heart. Everything has a center. Here we stand at the center of existence. Here we stand at the center of death.”

  The Monster looked to Sarah.

  “You on your Sea of Glass never understood,” he said. “It cannot be killed. If I strike this dagger into the heart of it this creature, this entity, will spasm out but will not die. You cannot kill death. But if I attempt to its convulsions will reach out and spread like a great wave. That wave will wipe away the Multiverse in an instant. In that moment it will consume everything.”

  The Monster stared at his blade.

  “That power…I have that power in my hands.”

  He looked back to the Phage. “I wield the power of death. I am now Death’s specter casting my shadow over all of existence. The power of the God of Death…is so much more amazing then the power of the God of Creation.”

  Suddenly the Monster took his knife and cut into the tapestry of the Multiverse around him. The walls of the Threshold shook. With the Monster’s cut a multitude of Universes screamed all at once then faded.

  Sarah watched in horror. It was an awful site. It was awful watching how casual the Monster was with the atrocity he had just committed. With that simple slice he had cut into the Multiverse and erased several Verses.

  As Sarah watched this she had to wonder how he could wield such power to carve into the fabric of existence.

  “How did you…” she asked then stopped. She could not articulate into words her awe and her horror.

  The Monster stared at his blade. “This…this is a very special thing. It was guarded very closely by the Order of the Dao. In my world…in my Verse our Farinata Uaegli Abertio was so much more brilliant then the one that created your Sea of Glass. The two Farinata’s shared a similar vision. It was a vision of a structure that could harness cosmic energy. Your Farinata used it to create the Prism. Or at least to sketch its design. His design was for a device that could sail through infinity. Our Farinata understood how truly powerful the same principles could be. Our Farinata understood that those energies could be used to cut through the very fabric of the cosmos. It was part of Farinata’s vision to burn away the very fabric of existence. He called the structure he designed, Trishula. In the Hindu religion Trishula is the blade wielded by Shiva. Shiva uses her blade to burn away existence and wake us all from the dream of life. Our Farinata worked on his design till he was consumed by the madness of the need to finish it. He stabbed himself in the eyes because he could no longer stop his visions of Trishula.”

  The Monster stared at his blade. “This is the weapon of Gods. This is a tool that can harness the energies of the cosmos and cut through the fabric of creation.”

  As he stared at the blade he seemed to be reflecting on its structure as a person might reflect on a piece of art. “Its principles are much the same as those of your prism. But our Farinata made the design more efficient. He understood how that design could be etched into the molecules of metal.”

  Sarah had never dreamed any of this possible. The people of Verse Zero had worked centuries to create the tools necessary to save all creation. She had never truly imagined that far off in another Verse…another society was working to use those same tools…to end existence. She never dreamed they could create something that could do it so brilliantly and efficiently.

  “Don’t do this,” Sarah said. “Please.”

  The Monster looked up at Sarah. He studied her face. After a few moments he said, “Do not be sad, my dear. Instead rejoice. All of human existence has dreamed of reaching this point. All the poets. All the artists. All the composers, the scientists, and mathematicians…they have dreamed of seeing this moment. This great point of concurrence where all things connect. And end. And here…we are. You and I. Standing at the great crossroads of infinity. Where things exist…or do not exist.”

  The Monster stared again with wonderment at the great Phage. Sarah knew she needed to stop him. No matter what the cost.

  She took a step towards the Monster. He casually lifted his blade and pointed it at her. “Do not,” he said. “I can kill you in a thousand different ways. Even in this quantum state I can erase you so quickly and completely that you will be dead before your mind realizes it. You will have dreamed yourself then wake into non-existence.”

  Sarah paused. She did not pause out of fear. The Multiverse was worth more than her life. She would die a million times over in order to save it. However, she realized if he cut her down with his blade in this instant...there would be no one to stop his mad work.

  The Monster closed his eyes.

  “Can you hear that,” he asked Sarah. “That song? Can you hear the harmony? It comes from there,” he said pointing to the Phage. “It sings. Can you hear the music flow from one end of existence to all ends?”

  Sarah did not respond to his question. Instead she said, “You knew I would lead you here.”

  She was not asking. She was making an observation.

  The Monster smiled.

  “You follow tunnels, Sarah,” he replied. “But…I see the map. I see the path. I see the harmony. I see everything. I see it before it happens. I saw this point. I saw where you and I now stand. I saw it before you took your first steps in this direction. In quantum physics it's all probability. Nothing is truly predictable. But I can see all the possibilities. So, I am living in one universe and another all at the same time.”

  The Monster’s eyes scanned the Multiverse which surrounded him. His eyes rested once again upon Sarah.

  “You see the thing about genius Sarah…it doesn't just take understanding. It takes imagination.”

  “The mind has to make a leap beyond the numbers and the logic. That leap is what moves it outside the problem and allows it to see a new level. I did this Sarah. My mind stepped out of the Multiverse to see it all clearly. And I saw the path. I saw the path began with you.”

  He took a step towards Sarah and began circling her as he spoke.

  “Patrick was destined to see the path to the Threshold. Your people of Verse Zero understood that. And they were right. Patrick’s mind was beginning to see it. He was starting to understand what needed to be done. He did not see it clearly but on some level his mind was beginning to understand. Maybe that’s
why he loved you so much. Maybe he understood that the path to the Threshold began with you. Maybe his brilliant mind didn’t fully comprehend how or why but when he looked at you he saw the beauty of hope.”

  “Know this Sarah, the most important part of any path is finding where it begins. I understood the path began with you. I set circumstances in motion. That’s what it all always comes down to. Setting things in motion. Existence, time and space, it was all created at the Big Bang. It was the moment when all movement was set into motion. It’s all about movement. Movement and timing.”

  “I knew you were the one. I saw the path. You were the path. I knew the path began with you. The brilliance of finding the correct path to get here was buried in your soul. You could never understand it or see it. You could never see the pattern with your eyes. But I knew your instincts would lead you here. You had to be blind and fly with sheer instinct. You needed to leap beyond logic. Your mind had to take over to such a degree that it was driven by instinct. I knew…instinctively…you would find the Threshold. Instincts would lead you through the Multiverse to the one place that existed beyond existence. When you were beyond logic, when you were beyond thinking and planning, instinct would drive you here. Your brilliance would lead you to this place where no other minds in all of history or the future could find.”

  “And I followed. I followed as your instinct drove you. I followed knowing the ultimate and final destination. I knew the beginning of the path…and its end. I let you guide me all the way in between.”

  The Monster stopped moving. He spread his arms wide to the Phage. “Now you have led me here.”

  He turned again to Sarah. “To reach the Threshold it was never meant to take one. It required two. There is a certain balance there. It all does after all come down to symmetry.”

  “Your friends…they helped. In their fear they instinctively went to their own places. And the ripples they caused as they leapt into the falling Sea of Glass were the first step in leading you here. I must admit...it was beautiful to see. It was beautiful to watch it all unfolding before my eyes. To see the random chance and possibility leading to the only eventuality that mattered. I drove you here because you were the key. And now…I am the final cure.”