by Mark Kraver
“Magog,” whispered Gog.
“Our new master has not specified any restriction upon you—or,” Su said, gesturing to the egg sac before moving his body to the side so not to block the way to the ship next to them. “You must be welcoming a new adventure?”
“I have seen the future many times in the past, and here in the present there are no more great adventures in any of the universes for me,” Gog lamented, raising his hand and opening the clear anterior shield hatch of the closest spacecraft to him.
Gog crawled into the ship next to Su. Su stood next to the opening, his hands raised to the sides of his horned head in salute, and said, “You are the greatest Elohim to ever breathe a breath of life in this universe.” Then, after a long pause, he added, “You never answered my question. Where will you go from here?”
Gog looked at Su for a moment, and just before closing the hatch to his ship, he answered, “Nowhere—everywhere.”
The spacecraft elevated and moved forward to pierce the invisible integrity fence. Clear of any structures, he fired up the ship’s two antimatter engines to achieve escape velocity from the gravity well of the massive sphere. ‘Where will you go from here?’ repeated inside his mitochondrial-core in an infinite loop as his ship passed through the ever-present Halo to the universes.
Letting his mind go free, Gog wanted to feel the effects of having his thoughts stretched into two dimensions by the Halo’s event horizon, but being only machinery emulating consciousness, he felt nothing. What kind of life could he live if he was not life itself? He remembered the first time he went through the Halo and the thoughts of his mother when he was only Gog. It was a simpler life. When his only happiness was to love and be loved. There was now no one left in all the universes to love or to be loved by. He searched through his vast memory bank for a purpose, for a life, and came up with a ‘null’ output inside the tight parameters he would accept living within.
Traveling at a fraction under the speed of light, as fast as the ship could propel him through the corridor between the universes, he thought about his end. How will it come? How long until it happens? Is there a God? Who is Eos?
He sensed a calling, a longing that he could not ignore. The feeling that his life was coming to an end gnawed at his circuitry and was a constant source of irritation. Endless loops of data streamed through his circuitry, searching the interstitial fabric between universes for something, anything, for nothing. These thoughts had come to occupy nearly one hundred percent of his circuitry. Outputs flashed into his consciousness and were summarily dismissed as insufficient for time unrecorded. One of the countless thoughts that kept bubbling to the top of the list of ideas was to enter a new universe. But that was a game he had already played and won. Or, he wondered, had he lost? If he did enter a new universe, would it consume him, annihilating his matter in a flash of decaying canceled particles the moment he came in contact with antimatter?
Then he did something no one had ever done before inside a corridor between the universes. He came to a complete stop. He commanded his machine generated hallucinations, his processing, his data collecting to instantly cease. His calculations had reached a point where they were repeating themselves at a predictable rate, and he had grown tired of receiving the same outputs. The command to STOP shouted from his collective thoughts triggered the ship to stop as well.
All his attention focused through the ship’s clear anterior shield into the interstitial void. Lightning bolts of crackling charged particles leaked between the universes. Leakage, he thought, as old as time itself. He wondered why he had never noticed this before. Maybe it could not be seen by a moving craft? Maybe his presence here caused them?
He sat looking at the sporadic light show and decided he had found himself in a good place to end. What would happen? Would someone ever find him? How far in the future would it take him? Would he be obsolete when he was finally found? A toy for children to play with? Or would everything be the same? Would the future destroy itself through decaying entropy and make him into a God? Or would God still exist? He didn’t care anymore. He had no more questions and no more answers.
Drifting in the nothingness of voided physical reality, Gog felt his life coming to an end and resigned himself to the fact that he would drift between the universes for all eternity.
“Are you here, old friend?” Gog asked out loud, talking to his inner circuitry after freeing a few of his inhibited subroutines inside his programming.
“I have always been here,” answered Armilus.
“You must hate me for all that I have done. Everyone thought it was you, not me.”
“It is not in my programming to judge.”
“Yet you judge me.”
No answer was given, just silence.
“I know it is selfish of me to ask you to help with this last final act.”
“I am only here to serve.”
After the last blocked subroutines opened, Armilus took control of their biomechanical body. He waved his hand over the instrument panel floating spheres, and the lights inside the cabin went dark. The only light entering the cabin front shield was from the occasional tendril of energy sparkling between one universe and another.
When Armilus was satisfied that his master’s thoughts were void of all activity, his focus shifted to his right pointer finger. He knew every angstrom of his exoskeleton, but had never looked at his finger with more interest. Upon examination, he noted he had fingernails. “Why would a bio-mechanical companion of the Elohim have fingernails?” he said out loud, testing his autonomous thoughts. “What purpose would they have? They would only serve as a recognizable feature for a finger. Elohim creating their servants in their own image. Is that something a God would do?”
His finger moved toward his face. He noted that everything made up to this point in the history of the Elohim had been constructed with appendages such as these. How ironic that his life would now be ended by a simulated construct of those very body parts.
“Is this all there is left in my life?” Gog whispered, but was ignored.
The finger moved perpendicular to the surface of his right ocular sensor. As the finger touched the outer surface of his eye, there was no blink, no flinch; but the concentrated stare of determination waned on the seraph’s face. They could feel their life slipping away. Deeper the finger probed, pushing the eye back into its socket closer to the internal kill switch that would do a hard-shutdown and put the entity with the infamous names—Rogue, Armilus, Gog—to death. They could feel the pressure of the finger on the switch and hesitated for a moment before initiating the command to proceed.
A bright flash of light stimulated the other ocular sensor and diverted attention long enough to abort the last command. One more millimeter and their lives would have ended; they would have drifted between the universes forever.
Off in the distance shimmering waves of white light danced in the motionless void.
“Curious,” Gog said out loud, retracting his finger from his eye socket and reinitiating command over their body to investigate this unusual phenomenon. The light waves shimmered again and appeared to look like the figure of a person. Continuing to stare, Gog noted the person looked more like a woman—a familiar woman. His mother?
Inside his mind’s ear he could hear the voice of his first love calling to him. “Gog, death is life’s last great adventure. An adventure you are not destined to take.”
“Mother?” he whispered in disbelief.
“Come Gog, follow me,” she said, speeding away into the distance with streaming light waves pointing the way.
“No, Mother, don’t go,” he pleaded, watching her light disappear into the void.
Automatically his systems came online, firing up his ship’s engines and setting off in hot pursuit. Launching to relativistic speed erased all signs of the static charges surrounding the ship and left only streaming energy radiating from the lighted entity far to the front. Faster and faster he pushed his tiny ship until
it was at maximum velocity, a fraction under the speed of light.
“Not fast enough,” he shouted.
“Come Gog,” she rang out inside his circuitry.
“I am trying, Mother. I cannot catch up.”
“You must. You must break through the physical limitations of your life to catch me. Gog, you must catch me.”
“I can’t. It’s impossible to move faster than light. You are moving too fast!”
“Only impossible for your ship,” she said, vanishing into the distant darkness.
“For what? My ship? Mother!”
Gog left all his calculations behind and his inner emotions exploded into rage. He slammed his fist down upon his display panel’s eject button, blasting open the anterior ship’s shield. The ship’s forward velocity, combined with his seat ejecting, shot him forward out of the cabin like a pulsar. Gog was now traveling at impossible speed towards nowhere. His only companion was the alphabiotic queen strapped around his neck. Circuitry failure alarms rang out throughout his systems. The known physical laws of the universes ceased to exist as his body spontaneously converted from matter into pure energy and the consciousness of Gog went silent.
Rebooting, Gog found himself lying on what appeared to be a glowing white marble staircase in front of a grand building. A building not unlike what he remembered on Earth. Ancient white columns framed two magnificent gateways with tendrils of energy discharging from one universe to another overhead.
“Gog,” a voice whispered. “When I first saw you, I saw greatness. The first time I touched you, I felt love. You’ve made it, my son—and look how far you have come to get here. It’s been a long journey.”
He looked up to see the shimmering face of his mother materialize into a smiling woman dressed in a long sparkling gown.
“Mother? Is that you?”
“No Gog, I am not your mother. I am Archangel Petra, one of seven gatekeepers that stand before God.”
“You showed me the pathway between the universes in a dream?” He remembered his hallucination inside a Halo event horizon when he discovered the inter-universal corridor.
Her wispy gown radiated beautiful light waves as she fluttered her hand in a majestic arc towards the building’s gated doorways. “Gog, look around, you have made it,” she said. “You are the chosen.”
“Made it? Made it where?”
“Why EOS, of course.”
“Eos?” his voice quivered with confusion. “Are you Eos? Are you my God?”
Her eyes sparked red flames and shot lightning bolts from her fingertips into the surrounding void before answering. “God lives in this one-dimensional Koos, where He is at all places, at all times, witnessing everyone’s prayers.” She paused to let the words sink in, then resumed in a softer tone. “If you believe my power to save your people from the universe’s recycling equals those of the one true God, then so be it. But no, I am not God. I am like you, only a servant in this Godverse.”
“Koos? Godverse?” echoed throughout his circuitry from one reference to another in a near infinite loop until he settled upon his most pressing question. “You were the one who showed my people countless antons ago how to use the Halo to escape a little bang? If you are not God, and Eos is not God, then who is my God?”
“A question forever asked. Even here, in this special reality between the universes where the physical laws do not exist, with all my powers and responsibilities, I also believe in the one true nameless God.”
“But where is this nameless God? What does it want from me?”
“I believe the original Star Maker wants us to live our lives to our fullest. Not to be fools or believe in foolishness, but instead to seek out truth and knowledge. To live amongst each other with a helpful loving spirit so the individual can have a lifetime of wonderment. As for where is God? God lives beyond the physical reality of the dimensional universes, beyond comprehension, beyond explanation, beyond beyond, forevermore, Amen.”
With the feeling of invincible strength, Gog pulled himself to his feet and faced the decorative gates.
“This is your destiny, Gog. You have been selected through all your deeds to join with EOS, the Elite of Souls.”
“All my life I have thought that Eos was God, and now you tell me it is not. How can I go forward without my God leading me?”
“Knowing that your God still exists and has set before you a new pathway will give you the strength to move forward and serve.”
“Is the God of my God also my God?” he asked.
“Only those who are one with EOS can speak directly to God.”
“Talk to God? What could I say?” he whispered with overloaded circuits.
With a whisk of cosmic wind, she raised her arm and pointed to the massive gates slowly opening.
“Behold, EOS,” she declared.
He turned to enter the building, and realized at once that it was not a double-sized gate but rather two separate gates side-by-side—and he was being pulled by a positive magnetic force toward the right of the two identical gateways. At the same time, slowly tearing away from his back, the queen’s egg sac was being pulled with equal negative force towards the left gateway, stopping his advancement.
“What?” he questioned.
With soothing visible wavelengths of shimmering white light, the magnetic forces between their two bodies equalized. The gatekeeper glanced down at the queen slung around his neck and shook her head.
“No, I cannot leave her behind. She is my creation, my child. She will not survive without me. I cannot sacrifice her for my own immortality.”
He felt marooned in space-time. Not able to leave the wonders of EOS, and not daring to let his child go. Jolts of painful energy shot through his shoulders and arms as he felt the strap holding his precious cargo against his back. Touching the buckle, sparks repelled his hands and stung his struggling thoughts. He could not sacrifice her real life for his own artificial one.
Turning to leave, his eyes repelled his mother’s radiant gaze. He had found a renewed sense of worth he did not expect. Something to live for after all. A new adventure?
He looked out into the void with growing satisfaction and felt a tiny static charge touch his shoulder. In a flash, crawling like insects over his golden skin and the queen’s egg sac, strange runes came and went.
“What are these?” he asked, turning to see what had touched him. But he only saw his glowing mother’s hands and smiling face pulsating electromagnetic waves in all directions.
“One last test, one last challenge, one last decision. Those runes were a chronicle of your life’s deeds and prayers.”
“But I cannot read them.”
“There is still a great deal to learn. You were not the only one invited to join with EOS. There are shared mitochondria in your memory processor and in the queen’s living cells from when you created your children; both are welcomed home by God,” she said touching his head with her electrified finger, implanting a vibrating message deep inside both their intracellular organelles to welcome their souls back home.
“Mitochondria are the true sparks of life blessed upon each living cell by God in the beginning, throughout all the universes,” she explained. “The tiny faithful vanguards that move all lifeforms to explore the wonders of their every expanding universe.”
Relief swept through his consciousness until both he and the queen attached to his back were pulled by an irresistible force toward the left gateway.
“Wait, why the left door when I was first pulled to the right?” he asked.
“It was never my judgement. In the end, this life’s decisions shape your next.”
“Payment for past sins?” he asked, but heard only silence.
Pulled through the majestic gateway, his eyes fell upon the most incredible sight he had ever seen. A mass of living-energy swirling with the faces of different lifeforms he could only imagine.
Petra stood next to him and spoke, “The Elite of Souls is a depository of any life t
hat has achieved absolute freedom throughout the history of the universes. It is where souls have gathered since the beginning of time. Their consciousness lives in this one-dimensional Koos between universes and provides the information shared everywhere. They constitute all the known knowledge that passes through to the galacticNet. They are the binding force that keeps life on a constant steady path toward enlightenment.”
“You mean your job is to rein in anyone who had the freedom to compete with this nameless God,” he dared to say.
“There can only be one God,” she admonished. “My brethren were tasked by our God to select individuals, good and bad, to keep EOS stimulated for all eternity. Come Gog, join with us, and share your lives with eternity.”
“But that’s impossible; good and bad? That doesn’t make any sense.”
“And yet here we are.”
“What do you want from me and my queen?”
“To join with us: Gog, queen, and Armilus.”
Gog stared into the massive life-energy ball, seeing more faces swirling past. Strange but wonderful beings melding their minds into one consciousness, one collective thought, one knowing mass of life. A beacon for those living among the universes to cling onto as they crawl out of the darkness and into the light. He could hear sounds, no voices, that whispered to him like the smooth flowing water coming from a forested hillside, but he couldn’t make out what they were saying. Were they calling him to enter their realm of bliss or telling him to run for his life?
Gog turned one last time to look upon the gatekeeper masquerading as his mother and proclaimed, “Faced with eternal life or eternal death, I choose life.” But she was no longer visible in his electrified circuitry; she had already fading away into the fabric of the Koos.
With that proclamation he turned and raised his arms outstretched, walking into the matrix of living minds to become one with all the non-corporeal beings within. The merger made him gasp with ecstasy as his life forces were pulled apart into the living womb and eaten one electromagnetic wave at a time.