“All of this also applies to #25’s overall movement. According to my calculations, if a pilot is able to take full and absolute control, this Machine can be maneuvered in increments as small as a micrometer. Think about that, the ability to move something a thousand feet long in distances much tinier than a human hair.”
“That happens when I’m able to move all of these knobs at the same time, right?” Paress asked.
“Yes, that’s right,” Behlen said.
“But there must be a hundred of them!”
“One hundred and forty, actually. Seventy on each side.”
“I’m sorry, Dr. Behlen, I can’t do that. I know I can’t.” Paress shook his head in disbelief that such an insane thing existed.
“Maybe not now…” Behlen said, “But someday you might. You’re young and have plenty of time. For now, though, you only have to keep the eight yellow knobs under control. If you do that, #25 will recognize you as its pilot. Okay?”
Behlen paused. “Paress, you can do this. And I’m not just saying that. The way you defeated the suppressor and then protected yourself and Casten long enough for rescue to come… that took an amazing amount of talent and control. I fully believe you can apply that same talent here and capture your prize.” He gave a genuine and encouraging smile.
Paress looked over at Casten’s window. Casten also smiled and nodded. “C’mon Paress, you’ve got this. We’ve got this. I’ll be right here helping, okay?”
Paress inhaled and then let out a long breath. “Right. Let’s do it.”
“Perfect,” Behlen said, while at the same time Casten said, “Yeah!”
Behlen looked down, punching something into a data pad. “Remember, Paress, when the crosshairs appear, concentrate only on them until they disappear. Then take the two main control sticks in hand and keep the circles pointing up. Hold them for seven seconds and then eight more will appear. Hold all of the circles for seven seconds. You do that and you’re on your way. The galaxy awaits.”
“Yes sir!”
“Okay, here we go.” The screens showing Behlen and Casten went dark, removing the potential distraction. “Starting in five…four…three…two…one.”
As promised, the main screen in front of Paress was filled with a giant white crosshairs on black. Paress did his best not to think of anything else but the two intersecting lines. The point where they converged… The longer he stared, the more it seemed like he was starting to move toward that convergence. And as he got closer, he thought he could see something there. What was it? A statue? A sleeping person? There was something familiar about the person. Who…?
The crosshairs suddenly disappeared and Paress felt as if he’d been thrown out of a dream after having water splashed on him. Just as he had been sucked into the crosshairs, it seemed like he was being pulled back out, and as he did so, the forms of two giant round objects came into view. He blinked and then he realized the round objects were spinning furiously. The circles!
He quickly grabbed the two main control sticks in front of him and pushed and pulled, tilted back and forth, on each one, trying to bring the corresponding left and right circles under control. They were spinning so fast! Behlen made it seem like they’d be out of center a bit, not actively careening out of control. He wrestled with the sticks, trying to reign in the spinning discs. They were starting to fade away. No! Not yet! his mind screamed.
Paress narrowed his eyes and wiped away all thought of what he saw inside the crosshairs. Whatever it was, he couldn’t think about it now. He had to bring those damn spinning discs to heel. And as he focused, he could see their movements more clearly. It was chaotic, but there was a pattern. And as he began to recognize the pattern, he was able to move the sticks in the opposite directions to counterbalance the pattern. They started to slow and he could finally see the arrows inside the circles.
With a satisfying flash, the right circle slammed into position, its arrow facing up. The left circle’s pattern was a mirror of the right’s. He started to compensate for that fact and as he did so, it too grew brighter and more in focus. And then another flash of light and the disc locked into place with its arrow aiming upward. Now he had to keep both circles aiming up for seven seconds. He could feel them struggling to break loose. He had to keep making small adjustments with the sticks to keep them in line. The seven seconds seemed to take so long to go by. Come on, just a little more!
Eight smaller circles suddenly came spiraling in from the outer edges of the main screen, getting smaller as they went. Or was it that Paress’ view was actually zooming out? But the first two circles must be flying out with me because they’re staying roughly the same size… The eight circles locked into place and the screen jolted for a moment as if Paress has truly been moving and then suddenly stopped. But there was no time to think about that. He had to bring the new discs under control.
As he started to reach his mind out to the small control knobs, Paress’s grip and focus on the control sticks lessened and the two large circles started to spin again. The eight smaller circles almost immediately began to disappear. Paress almost yelled in surprise, but he managed to get the circles back under control just in time and the smaller discs became bright and solid again.
He took a deep breath. How am I supposed to do this? And how long do I have? He glanced down from the screen for a moment and at his hands, trying to keep the large circles under control by repeating the pattern with subtle movements. What if…? He extended his telekinesis out again, but this time, instead of searching for the knobs, he focused on his hands. His conscious brain was moving his hands after all, why not simply do the same with his telekinesis?
Paress slowly let go of the idea of moving the sticks with his hands, and instead, doing so with his mind. He made sure to keep his grip tight. He knew he had to physically hold the sticks, but the movements themselves could come from his telekinesis. As he did so, the imagery of water came to him again, ebbing and flowing, moving side to side… Two pools of water in two large lakes…
Their motion was so soothing and gentle. Easy to visualize. He felt the motion become part of him, swaying along with his very life force, and just as he didn’t have to concentrate to breathe, or make his heart beat, he didn’t have to concentrate on the two bodies of water. He could move them with his unconscious mind because they were a part of him now.
Paress moved on to the eight smaller ponds surrounding the two large lakes. Each pond also had a pattern, the water was moving in a circular fashion. He immediately became aware that like the larger circles, the four smaller ones on the left moved in the same pattern as the ones on the right, simply in reverse. Good, that would be easy to take care of after he determined the pattern.
His mind moved clockwise from the top right pond, feeling the pattern as if he stuck a finger into a small whirlpool. The pattern was actually rather soothing and easy to determine so he began to swish the water with his virtual finger going the opposite direction. Somewhere in another reality, he knew he was using his telekinesis to turn a knob, but that was such a crude way of looking at it and he banished the thought.
The little pond’s waters became still and tranquil, and he lazily kept his finger moving to keep it that way, making sure not to do it too much and cause turbulence. He placed another finger into the next pond, and did the same. He nearly laughed at his good fortune that there were only eight pools of water since he only had ten fingers. He had more than enough to do the task. And almost instantly, he had the water in the second pool calmed. He’d barely even had time to acknowledge that fact when the third, and then soon after, fourth pools of water were made tranquil.
Paress couldn’t even remember when he’d started working on those last two, but he’d already brought them under control, his fingers moving in small gentle circles that combined to make something intricate and beautiful. And as he saw the design begin to form in his head, he began to form the mirror image of it. Ah! He nearly sighed aloud in happiness. The point w
asn’t only to see a bunch of tiny patterns, but to also see what those patterns contributed to make as the whole.
Maybe that was why he’d finished the third and fourth patterns so quickly: he was already starting to see where the overall design was going. It was something the Ancients called a Mandala. How did he know that? It was a dream. The Truth of the universe was opening before him.
And as he completed the pattern, Paress swore he could start to hear music. Stringed instruments. He knew they were called sitars but he wasn’t sure how he knew that. They came to a crescendo just as he completed the pattern, the resulting mandala was beautifully simple, and yet he knew that simplicity was only because his limited comprehension was currently incapable of seeing more. But someday he knew he’d be able to more fully understand it.
As if understanding his thought process and approving, the mandala began to pulse all of the colors of the rainbow and the entire thing grew beyond comprehension as he started to fly into it, the sitars fading away as everything around him converged into a brightness so great, he felt his soul would burst into flame. Just as he was about to do so, everything suddenly went black and he was snapped back into consciousness. He was sitting in #25’s cockpit in pure darkness— even the dim backlights were out.
“I did it,” Paress said softly. Then, more loudly, “I did it!” But why was he here in darkness? Had he broken the Machine? He began to worry. “Hello?” he called out. “Dr. Behlen? Casten?”
It took him a moment to realize a tiny point of light had appeared in the center of his screen. As it slowly grew larger, he could start to hear sounds fading in. And from those sounds, music. Violins. The light grew brighter and expanded, filling all of his screens so that he was surrounded. The light quickly settled and he realized he was flying through space, soaring past stars and planets, vibrant living worlds, and dead ones.
As the speed of the journey increased into a blur, a man’s muffled, distorted voice began to speak, but Paress could barely understand him. Something about a dreamer, a fool. A journey into night. A hill. The last words repeated and echoed around him. “Elder Ahdoh…”
As the words began to fade, the music started to grow louder and louder as it repeated the same five notes, and Paress recognized them as part of the pattern that was buried in the spinning circles. The sound was reaching deafening levels as the visuals of interstellar travel surrounding him slowed and then settled on a beautiful blue and green planet. It was surrounded by beings of light, angels with flaming swords, and ships made of crystal and marble.
Paress became vaguely aware of three small numbers on his far left, easy to miss considering the mind-numbing visuals he was witnessing. A.D. 14,999; W.C.Y. 5,825; B.F.S.C. 10,958. A Calendar?
All of space around the planet glowed with heavenly light and Paress realized tears were streaming down his face. The beauty of what he saw was something that affirmed his entire existence— he wasn’t sure how or why, but it did. And then the light was sundered as black cracks broke through. And from those cracks, dark monstrous things clawed out, followed by twisted ships and other horrific things. Paress nearly screamed, both in fear and anger that these invaders should destroy the perfect beauty and serenity of the place.
But then the music rose again and over an earsplitting cacophony of cascading strings that were both glorious and frightening, the forces of light fought back. Flaming swords split hideous monsters in two and crystal ships fired searing white beams that vaporized thousands of black ships in an instant. All of this was set to an overture so loud that Paress could feel his seat shaking and could see his view screens vibrating furiously.
The visuals sped up and Paress watched an apocalyptic battle fought with incomprehensible weapons played out in super fast motion, as if he was fast-forwarding a movie. The scope of the battle grew and swallowed up entire planets, star systems, and what looked like most of a galaxy. It now seemed like his viewpoint was of someone trying to escape this war that had grown so large it seemed to alter reality itself. The view turned away just as Paress thought he would go insane from the scale of the devastation inflicted. He realized the music was there to save him, to help keep him safe from everything he’d witnessed.
He was far away from the battle now. It couldn’t reach him. He was going to be fine. As the safety of distance began to settle his nerves, the overture began to end, the strings settling into a fast rhythm that slowed as horns cascaded downward. The horns faded away and the strings settled into a gentle melody behind a piano in a new music phase as the scene slowed and focused on another planet. It took Paress a moment to realize the planet was his home of Wystra. But it was so different as to be unrecognizable.
There were no starships, no space stations, and most of all, no Barotil— only Cladoril orbited Wystra. Barely any lights shined out from the side of the planet currently in night. Paress realized he was looking at Wystra’s past. Before the Ancients came, he thought. A quick glance at the calendar revealed the dates: A.D. 18,259; W.C.Y. 9,085; 7,698 B.F.S.C. He understood the last two dates then as the Wystran Combined Year the original True Wystrans used; and Before Francescan Star Calendar as the years used to mark the era before the Empire became a space-faring civilization and established a new galactic standard year. But what was A.D.? The “A” probably stood for Ancients. Ancients Date…?
With the visuals locked firmly and peacefully on Wystra, the music faded out— but Paress knew it was doing so before completion. Confirming his belief was the fact that before the music disappeared completely, he could make out someone singing the word, “Midnight” before it was gone completely. With the cockpit quiet again, the visuals on the screens went dark too, the Wystra of the past fading into black, or “Midnight”, as the case may be.
Paress collapsed back into his seat and swallowed. What did all of this mean? He tried to think back to the spinning circles and the mandala, and was angry with himself that he’d already started to forget what he’d seen— what he’d felt and experienced that now seemed to be things done unconsciously. So he tried instead to focus on what happened after the circles, patterns, and the mandala. The terrifying war that swallowed up entire galactic civilizations and most of an entire galaxy.
And to his absolute horror, he found that the memories of what he’d seen were fading from his mind just as quickly as the mandala had. Quicker, in fact. He tried to remember the beautiful music, tried to hum it or sing it out loud. But it was all going away. No, something… or someone was taking it away from him!
“What? Why?” he yelled. “Who’s doing this? Stop it. Stop it!” He tried to lash out with his mind, to stop this thief from stealing something so life changing from him. He would die without this knowledge.
“Please,” he begged. “Let me keep something. Why are you doing this?”
He felt deep sadness and regret from the thief. As if they’d allowed Paress to see something that he wasn’t meant to see and was trying to clean up after the fact. Despite being telekinetic, Paress had never been able to communicate psychically.
“Let me keep something,” Paress repeated, and to his great relief, he found he could suddenly remember the music again. It came rushing back into his mind, loud and glorious, and he was so overjoyed that tears of happiness stung his eyes. But then he remembered what else was being taken from him and the tears turned bitter.
Decades later, all of those memories would be restored to him. But at that moment in his life, he didn’t know that, and he was filled with almost suicidal despair. To have so much revealed to him of the Universal Truth of existence and events of history so massive that they registered on a cosmic scale…ripped away from him. With one last impression of sorrow from the other conscience, it was gone, and Paress was alone. The backlights of the cockpit came up like normal, as if nothing had happened. He buried his face in his hands and cried.
Chapter Nine
The cockpit’s blast door slid open and Behlen ran in, followed by Casten and Jil, who was carryin
g an emergency medical kit.
“Paress?” Behlen asked. “Paress can you hear me? Are you okay?”
Casten ran to the other side of Paress’ seat where he was still slumped over. It had been almost a hour since the experience and the robbery of his memories. His crying had eventually subsided and he was left in a state of exhausted despair.
Casten hugged him close. “Paress, it’s okay. We’re here. What happened? Here, let me see.” He pulled Paress’ hands from his face and Paress could tell from Casten’s expression that his eyes must have been horribly bloodshot from his crying.
“What happened?” Casten repeated. “Why’ve you been crying?”
“Doctor?” Jil whispered to Behlen.
He waved her away, “No, I don’t think he needs medical attention. Just a sympathetic ear or two. Give us some privacy, please.” Jil nodded and left the cockpit.
“Paress, I just want you to listen to what happened on our end, okay?” Behlen said. “You don’t have to talk. There’s no rush. Just listen.”
Paress nodded and Behlen continued. “First of all, I have to say that you and Casten have synchronized together and with #25 at a level I’ve never seen before in people so young and in their first time with a Machine.”
“I don’t know what you were doing and how you were able to focus on those crosshairs so well,” Casten said, “but wow, it came through loud and clear. I thought this was gonna be hard, but I received your signals perfectly and had them synched with Allepexxis in no time.”
Paress realized that while the other conscious had stolen his memories of the mandala and the event afterwards, it hadn’t taken away his memory of what he saw inside the crosshairs. I’d better tell them now in case that thief returns!
Space Dragon Allepexxis Page 21