Gokla shook his head. “It is not possible. You’ve cast your lot in with us, Amnon. This was a lifetime appointment.”
“I can’t be a part of this any more.” He said. “Let me go. I will keep your secret. Why can’t we just part ways, and never meet or speak with each other again?”
Gokla reached a skeletal hand around Amnon’s neck, and touched the nape. A shudder ran down Amnon’s spine.
“Should you wish to leave, I will order the killswitch in your neck activated. You will die. That’s the only way you will leave the Sons of the Vanitar, Sarkoth Amnon. Now, are we clear?”
They were.
He left Titan on the next shuttle.
Back on Terrus, Amnon retired to his private quarters.
He glanced out the window. Sky-spanning cities rose heavenward. Buildings bristled at the sky like spears, from horizon to horizon. Everywhere was peace and prosperity, in ignorance of the human virus that seeked to sabotage it.
Above was Selene, where the Solar Arm’s center of government was incorporated. Soon, he would take a shuttle there. But for today, he wanted Terrus to own him.
Amidst the concrete sprawl, there were green things on Terrus. Life. Selene wouldn’t be terraformed for hundreds of years yet - it was as mechanistic and cruel as any place in the universe.
And at the moment, he had great respect for life.
I thought I wanted to destroy all of this, once. Sarkoth Amnon said. I was a child that never grew up.
Increasingly, he thought of the Sons of the Vantiar in similar terms. None of them had ever faced the reality of such awesome destruction, or what its arbiters have to pay.
He’d heard a story once, about a monkey who challenges god.
“I will dethrone you,” the monkey says. “I am stronger, I am smarter, I am more resourceful. By the mandate of the powerful to oppress the weak, I will throw you from the heavens and rule in your place.”
“A lofty goal,” God says. “May you attain it.” So the monkey trains. It practices. It thinks itself exceptional, a fine specimen of monkeyhood, more than a match for God. To prove itself, it climbs all the way up the sky, climbs up into space, climbs through the vastness of the cosmos using the stars as pawholds. It goes higher and further than any creature has gone before.
Finally, it stands at the very end of the universe. A hard barrier stops it, and there is no more terrain left to conquer.
It marks its territory by pissing on the wall.
“I have laid claim to the furthest end of the universe!” It crows to God. “Nothing is outside my reach!”
God smirks. “Is that so?”
Then he holds out his hand.
The monkey feels dismay, for God has a urine stain on the palm of his hand.
He chuckled without much humor, and went to his innermost room.
He thought of Mykor, the captured rebel. He still had his old friend’s dehydrated body in a Black Shift pod. If he wanted to, he could bring him back. Perhaps ask him some questions about Caitanya-9, and get better answers.
But that was something he could not face. He now stood at the edge, and additional knowledge might push him over it. He already thought he knew far too much.
Inside his closet was the nanomesh comsuit he’d worn on Caitanya-9. He brushed the cuff, activating the suit, and then made it play the final message it had recorded, the way he’d played it hundreds of times since his return.
Nobody but him had heard it, and nobody but him would ever hear it.
Hello, Sarkoth Amnon.
I believe I have created a local exception to the wormhole that stole the planet from space. I hope this message reaches.
You’re thieves.
You’ve stolen from me something I will never get back. I don’t have a name. I ask myself who I am, and there is no answer. There’s a hole, and the hole fills with white hot rage.
If I don’t know who I am, then I will write who I am. If there is no answer, I will create one. I am a destroyer, and now that the Wipe is in my control, I am a destroyer god.
Questions about my past no longer matter. I will obliterate you and every single member of your race from the universe, and I will do it with great satisfaction. That is the answer to any question. You took my past from me and burned it on a fire. Understand these words. I will do the same to your future.
I know about you, and about the Sons of the Vanitar. The windy presumption of that phrase! The arrogance! You will never be their sons!
When you came to Caitanya-9, you thought you’d bring about the end of humanity. You have failed. I have ensured that the Wipe was unleashed in another place, perhaps in another time. Why have I done this?
Because you are a child in this game. You think you seek the destruction of everything…but you are mistaken.
Your true ambitions are far more base: power. Just power.
You don’t want humanity to die, you want to kill humanity. You want the hand in the executioner’s glove to be yours. You want the decision to be yours. Had you gained access to the Wipe, I truly believe you would not have released the explosion. Your dreams of an apocalypse are a sham.
No, Amnon, when my vengeance finally blazes down from the skies, I think you will panic and cry and run into the streets like everyone else.
To be blunt, I’ve delayed my vengeance because I want you to suffer.
You are a rich man, a powerful man. You trampled me, and many others. It pleases me that you will never enjoy another moment in your luxurious life.
You will never escape your own fear.
Because you know that any second, I might return to the sky. Next month, next year, next decade, next century. Or perhaps as you finish reading these words. I will bide my time. The Vanitar were patient, and so am I. First, you will hear the screams. All around you, from a world whose time has come. Then you will climb from the lap of unfulfilling luxury, pull yourself from a sexbot’s bed, look through the clouds, and it will be there.
A planet, surrounded by two black moons.
I am coming, Sarkoth Amnon.
And your world will burn with the fury of my gaze.
Download the second book in the series, Extinction Level Event: www.amazon.com/dp/B01NBKXA76/
Black Shift (The Consilience War Book 1) Page 24