Prisons of Stolen Dreams

by Christopher St. John Sampayo

  “Will you do that for me, Sarah?” the Monster asked.

  Sarah nodded. “Yes,” she said.

  The Monster smiled. It was again that sad smile. Sarah understood that he liked her answer. But in his heart, in his wretched heart, he did not believe it.

  Despite her hatred of this creature Sarah found herself reaching out to him. She touched his face. She looked deep into his yes. “Yes,” she said again. “Yes…I will remember you.”

  Now the Monster’s smile was genuine. Their eyes stayed locked on one another in a moment of true understanding. Then the Monster turned and looked again at the Phage.

  It was moving in and out of different states. Sarah realized that the Monster had been waiting. It was always all about timing. He was waiting for the right moment to start carving the Phage out of existence.

  “It is hard living with the difficult weight of who I am and in what I have to do. But no more. Everything is falling into place.”

  His eyes studied the flickering Phage. “It is nearing the moment. I know where the infected pieces are and I will destroy the Verses around them. But I also have to know where they are going to be before they get there and instantly be moving to the next place. And I have to get them all.”

  He looked to Sarah again. She could see there was fear in his eyes. He stepped towards her. He put his arms around her and pulled her close. Their faces neared. On some level Sarah was surprised that she did not pull away.

  They kissed.

  She was repulsed to be kissing the Monster yet she never wanted the kiss to end. Because she knew when it ended he would move forward to his death and she knew that this Monster was going to die for her.

  They kissed at the heart of infinity and that moment in many ways lasted forever. Then the eternal moment passed.

  The Monster stepped away from her.

  “Go,” the Monster said. “The Threshold will become unstable as parts of creation are cut away from it.”

  His mind was now cold and calculating. He was staring at the interweaving Verses which surrounded the Phage. He knew his moment was coming.

  Yet he still remembered Sarah.

  “Go,” he said. “I cannot fully concentrate if I think you might not be safe.”

  He stepped towards the strange spinning vortex that at times looked like a creature and at other times looked like a diamond. Sarah could not see the Monster’s face any longer but she knew his eyes were closed. He did not need eyes for what he was about to do. Like a musician playing a piano he already knew where every key was.

  The Monster’s arm moved out and he sliced at the fabric of existence. In an instant a universe was gone. However, the Verses beyond it would now not be infected. He sliced at another point in space and time. As he did so Sarah noted the blood on his hand. It was his own. Wielding this awesome power was more than mortals were ever intended for. Doing what must be done was slowly tearing the Monster apart yet he continued cutting at the tapestry of the Multiverse.

  In this moment the Monster was like a sculptor of time and space. He was shaping infinity to the way it needed to be.

  The walls of the Threshold began to shake. The Threshold was detaching itself from the rest of the Multiverse. It was fading from creation.

  “Go,” the Monster said. “Go, Sarah.”

  Strangely Sarah found that she did not want to leave.

  The Monster’s breath was becoming more labored. His body was slowly being ripped to shreds. She could see lacerations on his arms as the cosmic forces were taking their toll on him. “Go,” he said. It was barely a whisper. But in his last whisper she heard one word that broke her heart. “Please.”

  Sarah did as he asked. He was sacrificing himself for her. Sarah would not let the last piece of knowledge he had be that she had died too.

  Sarah took a step back. She fell back through the doorway that the Monster had created to follow her into this place. She took a step backward and fell back into the Multiverse just as the Threshold fell away from the rest of creation.

  In that moment Sarah saw the Monster fall to his knees. But he was still working. Sarah knew he was no longer working from a conscious stand point. He was letting his brilliant instinct do the last work. He was moving beyond pain.

  Then just like that he was gone. The Threshold closed. The Monster was no more.

  Because of this existence remained.

  Epilogue: The Land of Lost Children

  Sarah stood on the shores of space and time. She did this often. Sarah had once been told that life is a series of snapshots. Each time Sarah stood at these shores had been a snapshot of her life. In each of those snapshots she was a different person. The events between those snapshots changed who she was. With each snapshot she stared at the Sea of Glass with different perspective.

  After she left the Threshold, Sarah made her way across the Multiverse back to the island on the Sea of Glass. She had lived for decades in various Verses but in this unique world outside of time and space mere weeks had passed.

  Sarah returned to Verse Zero and found a burned city. The very island was scorched.

  Isiah had remained on the island. He stayed saving and protecting those he could. He eluded the insect creatures for days while he searched for survivors.

  Something strange occurred during this period. The creatures from the dark city began to die. Isiah found their corpses in the streets of Adar and in the fields by the pond. However, the creatures had not been killed through violence.

  Later autopsies would show that their bodies had been modified over time to require a special enzyme in their diet. When they did not receive it their cells died from a lack of protein. The enzyme itself was rare. It puzzled those who studied the creatures bodies why such a unique requirement had over time been encoded into the creatures biological make up. Why had this obvious design flaw been built into an otherwise perfect creature of death. It was a weakness that made the creatures sudden death an inevitability.

  Sarah knew why this had been done. She knew a Monster had engineered these creatures to live just as long as they needed to. He designed them to perish when they were no longer required. He had done this so a city could be rebuilt.

  When Isiah saw all the assassin creatures were dead he set about recalibrating the Prism. Slowly he rebuilt their world. Slowly he rebuilt the sky.

  He then reprogrammed the Prism as a beacon. Using the energies of the Prism, Isiah created a pulse. It was a steady pulse that became a lighthouse throughout the Multiverse.

  In distant lives, in distant Verses geniuses from a forgotten island on a sea of glass began to remember. They heard a song calling to them through the cosmos. As time passed the song set a stirring in their hearts. It was a longing for home.

  This longing worked its way into music and art in a thousand worlds. It worked its way into poetry. It moved and inspired all who heard it. Over time some of these geniuses understood what the harmony was trying to tell them. It was telling them it was safe to return.

  One by one they did. They had been gone for years but when they returned to Verse Zero little time had passed.

  They buried their loved ones. They payed homage to those who had been lost. Then they began to rebuild.

  Years had passed since those events had occurred. Once Sarah had been a student in this place. Now she was a teacher.

  The people of Verse Zero still collected prodigies. They still found the best of them in all the Multiverse. They taught them and tried to help them fulfill their potential. However, now these prodigies were given a choice. Catalina’s discovery of using symmetry to jump from Verse to Verse allowed children brought to the floating world of Verse Zero to do something that generations before them had never been able to do. They could return home.

  Prodigies brought to Verse Zero were given the choice to return to their worlds or to continue working for the greater good. Those that stayed worked to find and train other prodigies from throughout the Multiverse.

  The
people of the Sea of Glass no longer took pieces of mind. They focused instead on helping geniuses from throughout existence fulfill their potential.

  Some who chose to work for the greater good were sent to worlds that needed them the most. The people of Verse Zero worked hard to do as much good as they could throughout the Multiverse. They felt it was their duty and their sacred responsibility. Fate and time had chosen them to be unique. Because of this they used their gifts to help others and to make a positive difference.

  Sarah knew the good they did was only possible because a monster had sacrificed himself so they could all live.

  They built a new city on the foundations of the old one. New Adar grew and its citizens began to have their own children.

  It was understood that the Phage was no more. The observations of those in Verse Zero showed that the Phage’s existence had been wiped from the Multiverse. How it had been eradicated was a subject of much debate. They understood that it had been one of them but they did not know who or how.

  Sarah never told anyone who was responsible for the Phage’s demise. She knew no one else would ever really understand. The Monster had not made his great sacrifice for praise. In his own way he had done it for a selfish reason. In the end what did it matter what his reasons were for sacrificing himself? Because of his sacrifice the Multiverse had a future.

  However, the people of the land on the Sea of Glass lived with a certain fear. Had the cure been the true cure? Was there another cancer just beyond their vision?

  Sarah too wondered this at times. Even these prodigies could not see all. They could not know all. They had fixed their gaze on the one vision of death. That was their one disease to combat. Maybe somewhere there was another city on the edge of space and time. Maybe there was another group of brilliant children who were working to stop some other pillar of existence from crumbling.

  Perhaps the future generations of Verse Zero would one day face some great dark threat.

  In a multiverse of limitless possibilities there was always the unknown. Those from Sarah’s generation, from the seventy-third generation of prodigies were known as the great ones. They had done their duty. Sarah’s generation hoped their children would never have to face a challenge such as theirs. However, they knew enough to know that was a naive hope.

  They all knew that wars to end all wars led to second wars. And third. So, they prepared themselves to always be ready in case fate called upon the people of Verse Zero once more.

  Sarah thought of all this as she stared into the sea of infinity. She rubbed her stomach. She was pregnant again. She was going to have a third child. At home Isiah was waiting for her. They married five years ago. She loved him. He was brilliant and perfect. Together they were building a better world.

  She no longer swam in the waters of infinity. Many of her generation no longer did. Sarah had lived the lives of others long enough. Now Sarah was focusing on her own life. She was focusing on her own family. She was focusing on helping the new children of Verse Zero learn all they could.

  Sarah stepped away from edge of the sea and she began walking along the fields. She continued walking till she was soon entering the dark forest. She no longer saw the creature here that she had known as a child. She hoped that creature had found peace.

  Sarah did not fear the woods. She felt safe and comfortable here. She walked into the forest’s depths until she reached a spot she had come to know well.

  She came to a clearing.

  In the clearing was a large stone. It was oblong and stood almost a foot high. Sarah had found the stone in the hills and brought it to this place. She then dug it into the ground and positioned it so it stood straight up.

  She had carved on to the stone one word. That word was:

  Hope.

  Sarah was not sure why she had chosen that word to carve on to this stone. She did not know if the Monster had a chosen name. He was Patrick but not Patrick. He had killed Patrick and taken him from her.

  However, the Monster through his sacrifice had given all the Verses something special. It was a gift only he could truly give. He had given the Multiverse hope. Even the darkest Verses now had a hope of tomorrow.

  That one word, hope, fit this place of memory.

  Sarah never told anyone about this place. Not even Isiah. No one would understand. Not truly. The Monster had killed many they loved and cared about. He had almost wiped out their civilization. Many still cursed his name. Sarah knew they would never understand how they all lived because a Monster had been willing to sacrifice his humanity.

  So, this was Sarah’s secret. It was her secret promise and her secret place. She looked at the flowers in her hand that she had gathered before coming here. They were blue flowers mixed with yellow ones. She came here often, but only once a year she brought flowers with her. Today was that day.

  Sarah crouched down. She touched the stone. Her fingers traced the word hope. As she touched the stone she thought of a boy she had once loved with eyes that stared past the horizon. She also thought of his other half that had become a Monster who had lost himself in time to give her this moment.

  Sarah put her fingers to her lips. She kissed them and then she pressed those fingers to the marker. She knew this gesture was worth nothing. This gesture had no effect. But she hoped that in his dying moment the Monster had changed his mind. She hoped that he had chosen to look into the future. She hoped in that moment he had seen this point. That he had seen that she cried for him. That she kissed the place where his memory remained.

  In a universe of countless lives and countless deaths one person remembered a monster for what he had sacrificed. He had not just sacrificed his life. He had sacrificed his humanity. She knew he had seen various courses he could have taken. However, he had chosen the one path that they all needed of him. He had chosen the path to move away from humanity to live an existence that others would find abhorrent.

  Sarah had come to realize that no one was perfect forever, but to be perfect for one moment could turn a monster into a hero.

  As she looked at the marker she remembered the sadness in the Monster’s eyes as he approached his death. Sarah thought that we can only hope that the dead as they died knew how much they were loved.

  In the City on the Sea of Glass the Monster was still spoken of with scorn. However, none had seen in his eyes what she had. She understood the truth of his words.

  Even monsters don’t want to die.

  The Monster understood something. True death is from being forgotten. That is why he asked Sarah to make a marker for him. He asked her to do this so that he could hope that despite his evil someone would remember the heart inside the Monster.

  So, for all he sacrificed Sarah would carry him in her memory. She would remember him as he was. He was a wretched thing that for one moment was perfect.

  In a Multiverse of infinite possibilities one moment can mean the difference between life and death. The decision that is made at that moment can shape the future.

  That decision can define a soul. In the end it can define if a person remains a monster or if history can label them as a hero.

  As she stared at the marker she thought of the words Belili had said. In this place they had gathered the best you.

  Sarah stared at the marker and wondered, what truly defines the best you? What decisions? What circumstances?

  A monster had done a good act. It was an act he was desperately needed for. He had killed millions to save the future. Was that not the best him?

  Sarah had learned that life was more tragedy then laugher. It was more tears then joy. We would always lose that which we love. Or we would be lost to those who love us. However, that one moment of love, that one moment of passion, that one moment of joy could define a soul. It could define a life.

  A monster had loved her. In doing so that monster became a killer to become a hero.

  Sarah was uncertain about her feelings at times. She woke up some days and hated the Monster for all he
had taken from her. Some days she loved him for the humanity he had sacrificed to save them all.

  Over the years Sarah had come to understand that right and wrong are mere flips of a coin. Circumstances and history decide which way that coin lands. If a monster was good and evil where was the certainty in anything?

  There was only one certainty that drove Sarah to this place in the woods. That was the certainty in the importance of promises kept. A kept promise too can define a person. In some ways this kept promise defined Sarah. In some ways this kept promise defined the monster who had asked for that promise.

  Sarah stood. She looked upon the grave one last time. She would revisit this place again and a year from now put flowers here. Sarah would revisit this place every year till her body could no longer keep the promises her lips had made.

  Sarah left the forest. She moved forward into an unknown future that contained only one absolute certainty. One day she too would die.

  She could only hope that someone remembered her with the depth of emotion that she remembered a monster.