The Sacred Era: A Novel (Parallel Futures)

by Aramaki Yoshio

  This woman! She gave herself to not only all the directors of this research center! To countless other men!

  K can no longer stand the thought of it. He has no choice but to accept the truth now. He has always hated every single human being in this world.

  “Even now, my stepfather, he forces himself upon . . .”

  A fit of sobbing cuts off the rest of Martha’s words.

  “But in the end you let him do it, didn’t you? Just like a beast. You screamed howls of pleasure.”

  Still in tears, Martha nods in response.

  “But I couldn’t help it! Please! Please don’t blame me! I couldn’t help it!”

  That moment, a sudden pallor sweeps across Martha’s face. Her eyes widen, turning almost hollow. A pair of ghostly arms appear from K’s sides. They reach for Martha’s neck.

  K awakens from a deep slumber the next morning.

  Officers from the Bureau of Investigations mill about the room of the research center. Noticing K coming back to his senses, they quickly proceed to question him.

  “So you’re finally awake, sir. Could you perhaps tell us exactly what happened here?”

  K repeatedly hits the side of his aching head with his fists.

  “It doesn’t look like you’re quite fully recovered yet. I don’t blame you. The administrator and his daughter were both killed last night. We found you passed out here in the kitchen. You looked like you were reaching toward the water jug. Did you see anything last night?

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Well, maybe he got you too.”

  “He? Who do you mean?”

  “The ghost. The ghost with six fingers.”

  “Six-fingered?”

  Hearing this startles K, causing him to look at both his opened hands to make sure he did in fact have only five fingers on each one.

  “That’s right. Markings from six fingers are clearly visible on the necks of both bodies. I think we can rule you out as a suspect.”

  Hearing the officer’s explanation so overwhelms K with shock that for a moment he thinks he may pass out again.

  “Would it be possible to see the bodies?” K asks.

  “I guess that shouldn’t be a problem. We haven’t had the chance to take them away yet. But why the interest?”

  “No particular reason, really. Just that . . .”

  “Oh, of course you’d want to see them one last time before they’re buried. I understand how you feel. Follow me.”

  The officer guides K to the corpses. Pulling off the sheet covering the bodies to display Martha’s dead face, he is almost relieved to see how peaceful she looks. But her beautiful face is frozen in place. A closer inspection reveals the exact same finger marks he saw on Abir’s neck clearly imprinted on her skin as well.

  The officers briefly question K, but it ends up being a mere formality. In fact, the officer endeavors to communicate precisely this point to him. K’s status as a Sacred Service officer must play a part in it. That much is obvious from the officer’s attitude.

  For the most part, K cooperates with the officers. He tells the inspector everything he knows. Except for that one detail, of course, that one detail he wishes he could just forget, as if it were little more than a bad dream.

  Did these events set things back into motion? It certainly seems that way, as soon after a letter arrives at K’s doorstep. Written at the top of the document are the words “Notice of Appointment.”

  “Confirmation of your assignment to Planet Bosch. Please depart within twenty-four hours from Igitur Spaceport—The Papal Court.”

  7

  It is finally time for K to depart this world. He makes his way toward the space terminal that houses the vessels bound for interstellar destinations, located all the way out in the middle of the vast wasteland known as the eastern desert. The Papal Court sends a car around to pick up K. Once the car exits the oasis city of Igitur, it meets a red-brown landscape extending in every direction. Every inch of it glistens under the glare of the severe sunlight, with just a single, lonely asphalt road slicing across the unbroken brown landscape, extending into the distance.

  The driver races along the road like a man possessed. In this heat, the engine must be kept cool as much as possible by running the air through it. K spots a weathered ruin on a distant hill, a green flag fluttering atop its structure. Must be the military using the place as a rest stop before continuing on in pursuit of a gang of outlaws.

  K sinks into the passenger seat, now drenched in the ceaseless pouring of his sweat. Before him, the sky glows in a cloudless blue. A haze of heat rises above the parched ground.

  The previous night was a sleepless one for K. His mind tossed and turned with his recollections of all that has happened, making him slip in and out of consciousness, in and out of dreams. He sees a vision of peeling off a transparent filmy membrane, one layer after another, like a molting cicada casting off its old shell. But with each layer he peels off, the world seems to slip away further. Once one layer comes off, another world reveals itself underneath, only to again lose all color. This ceaseless meaningless repetition slowly drives K toward madness.

  The road to the spaceport continues forward seemingly without end. Suddenly, K’s car screeches to a halt. After muttering some expletives, the driver pulls a worn-out rag from somewhere, drenching it in water. An engine burnout, perhaps?

  K steps out of the car.

  Corpulent desert plants still thrive out here. K finds a decrepit human corpse at his feet. All moisture sucked dry by the arid air, the corpse has almost completely mummified. Just a few hairs on its head remain. Nothing else left of the rest of its body but parched skin and bones. Only a matter of time before any living being abandoned alone out here withers and dies, its last few breaths quickly drying up like the little remaining skin on the skeleton.

  K twists his face at the sight of the corpse’s hollowed-out eyes looking straight ahead into the endless distance. Here, in its final resting place, it sees nothing more of this world.

  K’s thoughts scatter into so many pieces.

  Just where exactly am I going?

  After everything that’s happened, even Planet Bosch no longer seems all that important to K. No, more than just that, everything in this world has lost all meaning to him. If, somehow, he manages to find something meaningful to him, this too will be tenuous at best. So why is he still trying to hold on to whatever fleeting, whatever ephemeral meaning he can find in this world?

  Why is that?

  When did I start seeing the world this way?

  Is it because Martha has departed from this world?

  Could I have truly loved her? No, that can’t be.

  Had the driver not called out to K just then, perhaps his mind would have slipped even further into chaos. Their vehicle is now running again. It is time to continue onward, leaving behind them the corpse slowly submerging into the desert sands. The ground slopes up a hill strewn with dry earth and reddish-brown rocks.

  Soon, I will launch into outer space. Soon, I will leave behind all the troubles on this planet Earth.

  Rocky hills jutting upwards toward the sky surround the vast area where the space terminal waits. K presents his papers at the gate as they enter the terminal. Turning around, he watches the car double back toward the capital. It speeds into the distance, soon disappearing into the horizon.

  K waits for a long time within the steaming-hot inspection area. With nothing better to do, he starts a conversation with a man who has the look of a traveling merchant. The man appears so pale he may as well be a walking corpse.

  “Where to?”

  “Me? To Loulan. How about you?”

  “Farther off. I guess some thousand light-years away.”

  “Well, that’s certainly quite a distance you’re going. Is this your first time traveling to space?”

  “Yes.”

  “Same here. It’s going to be a lonely journey. It would be great if we were together on the same vess
el for a part of the journey at least.”

  “I think we will be. Until Loulan, that is.”

  “There are farther interstellar routes beyond there?”

  “There is indeed. It’s known as the Taklamakan Route.”

  “Oh.”

  “It’s the route beyond the Space Desert.”

  A khaki-colored military vehicle finally arrives to pick up K and the merchant. For some reason, the vehicle looks to K like a funeral car.

  The terminal’s installations glimmer in silver. They go through the routine boarding process, with an officer in a green shirt and shorts checking their papers.

  “It’s hot, isn’t it?” says the officer.

  “Yes, it sure is.” K answers.

  The two of them are the only passengers on the vessel when the shuttle rocket launches upwards, making its way toward the orbital station, much like a giant phallus ready to violate the heavens.

  Mechanical Doll

  1

  The phallus of a rocket penetrates the vulva of the orbiting galactic transport, sending throbbing vibrations throughout the vessel. A buzzer goes off inside the ship, startling K out of his mesmerized gaze at the spectacular sight of the docking procedure between the two spacecraft. He watches from the observation deck as his rocket ship slips its head completely inside the larger vessel’s orifice. She slowly envelops the transparent windows of the observation deck fully within the walls of her tunnel, secreting quite a bit of lubricating oil before everything finally comes to a complete stop.

  “We have completed our docking procedures,” an attendant announces to K and the merchant. “Please proceed to transfer to your galactic transport.”

  The two release their seat belts. Once they rise from their seats, the officer escorts them to the bow of the ship.

  As they make their way to the front, the officer informs K that four flights are scheduled to travel all the way to Loulan every year. It’s a considerable trek across space to get there, which is almost five hundred light-years beyond the edge of the solar system.

  “Mostly, it’s just transporting goods,” the tall attendant explains. “We have Karnak-type vessels in service on these routes. Did you see the ship from the observation deck? What a run-down piece of junk! It’s probably been in use since the time they first mapped out the Loulan route. No way you can ever get me to travel in these things.”

  K nods in silence. The attendant is right. The pallid ship does appear rather decrepit. The less said about it, the better.

  “You know, that ship does look kind of misshapen,” says the merchant.

  “Misshapen? Oh yes, of course. But don’t you worry. Once she’s satiated, she will become beautiful again.”

  The attendant explains that materials akin to human tissue constitute the body of the ship. She will again expand to her proper shape once she absorbs a full capacity of “cargo.” Hence, the pipe attached to the side of the ship, feeding the “cargo” into her womb.

  “So what sort of ‘cargo’ do you feed into her?” asks the merchant.

  “Protoplasm,” comes the attendant’s curt answer.

  Not grasping what sounds to him like jargon used only among the crew, K asks for a fuller explanation. But in place of one, all he receives in return from the attendant is a smirk. He says nothing more.

  When K and the merchant arrive at the ship’s bow, the ship’s crew hand them a simple inspection questionnaire to be filled out by all the boarding passengers. Nothing unusual—just the standard personal information such as name and date of birth—but nonetheless required to obtain permission to board the vessel. K makes short work of these forms, then proceeds to the next step in the boarding procedures, undergoing decontamination.

  Inspections of the merchant continue for quite a while, leaving the man looking bewildered. As K watches him alternate between shrugging his shoulders and muttering something to the crew, he wonders if he hasn’t tried to smuggle some prohibited item onboard.

  “See you in a bit,” K says as he pushes open the bulkhead door.

  K enters the ship’s “birth canal,” a red fleshy tunnel leading into the passenger cabin, the ship’s “womb.”

  The air is cool and damp inside the cabin. K finds some twenty or so passengers who boarded ahead of him, men and women of all ages scattered about the many rows of seats. Or to be more precise, they aren’t so much seats as they are pods in a shape that reminds K of caskets, giving the whole space the appearance of a morgue. A uniformed steward assigns K one of the “seats” while informing him of the vessel’s name, Hades. Evidently, its sister ship in the class is called Ghost.

  “Is there no ship by the name of Heaven?” K jokes.

  The curly-haired and dark-skinned steward can only shake his head.

  “No, sir,” he says with a very serious scowl. “However, there is a ship called Soul.”

  Every single passenger onboard is bound for Loulan. K asks about his further connection to Planet Bosch. However, he receives only a vague and unhelpful response.

  “Beyond Loulan, you will be traveling via the ‘Sacred Route.’ That’s not something we can tell you anything about,” the steward tells K. “Ships launch on that route on an irregular schedule, so it’s best to look into it after we arrive in Loulan.”

  The steward’s answer disconcerts K. He tries inquiring again, this time with a slight tone of annoyance as he keeps the attendant from going back to his duties. But it is to no avail.

  Finally, the chimes ring to announce the ship’s imminent launch. Just in time, the merchant rushes into the “womb” in a feverish haste, planting himself in the seat next to K’s.

  “Please fasten your seat belts and secure your bodies,” the attendant tells them.

  The other passengers are already buckled in. Following these instructions places them in a position identical to lying in a coffin. Once everyone is in position, the attendant walks through the cabin, shoving something similar to candy inside each passenger’s mouth. Its flavor reminds K of fish oil.

  The attendant comes around again, this time taking a handheld canister to each passenger’s face, spraying them with some kind of decontamination fluid. All this must have looked like an odd kind of ritual to anyone watching from the outside.

  “Do you know what all this is for?” the merchant asks K.

  “Not sure myself. The ship will go into Karnak navigation, so maybe it’s some sort of safety precaution?”

  Of course, this is mere speculation. In truth, K has no clue whatsoever.

  The ship begins its voyage, shortly accelerating to a speed a tenth of the speed of light, quickly leaving Earth and its solar system behind it.

  2

  Since K was secretly looking forward to admiring the view of the cosmos from within his ship, he is quite disappointed to learn that the ship has no windows in the passenger cabin at all. Evidently, Karnak vessels make use of a strictly utilitarian design, entirely lacking in any consideration of the passenger’s enjoyment of space travel.

  Then again, it’s probably the least of their concerns, what with all the complexities of Karnak navigation.

  The merchant, looking rather anxious, interrupts K’s thoughts.

  “Hey, do you know anything about this so-called ghost phenomenon on Karnak vessels.”

  “Well . . .”

  “It’s kind of worrying, you know.”

  “The attendant told me that there’s nothing to worry about,” K says, pretending to know what he’s talking about.

  The truth is that the phenomenon known as “Karnak ghosting” is still not very well understood. One explanation—perhaps the most plausible among them—suggests that the phenomenon is an effect of the passage of matter into an incorporeal state during Karnak navigation. At the moment of migration from the corporeal to the incorporeal field, flesh and spirit (normally conjoined in a single being) decompose from each other, effectively allowing the consciousness to separate from the physical body.

 
Right on cue, piercing alarm bells go off within K’s consciousness. While his grasp of the situation is murky at best, he is absolutely certain that this means the Hades is now approaching the speed of light.

  Here we go!

  Between fear and excitement, K steels himself for what comes next. Soon, the Hades will exceed the speed of light, thrusting K and every single passenger into an incorporeal state.

  Nausea. Blood shooting through his eyes. Objects twisting and turning red before his eyes. Pulse racing. Head aching. Cerebral pressure building. His skull on the verge of exploding. Then, an awakening from a vivid dream.

  K’s consciousness wrests itself from within, turning him inside out. It emerges from its cocoon, only to lose all substance as it speeds away. A second consciousness hatches within him, then flies off and dissipates. Now, a third consciousness is ready to come into being. And another. And another. This metamorphosis repeats in succession with no end in sight.

  Every individual responds to the experience of Karnak forces decomposing their consciousness in their own way. Still seated next to K, the merchant appears to be on death’s door, desperately panting and trying to catch his breath. Nearby, a beautiful young woman struggles with what appear to be red flares shooting out of various parts of her body. A married couple stiffen up their bodies so much that they may as well have been petrified into stone. Children’s bodies stretch out so much they look just about ready to tear apart. Up or down, front or back—there is no telling anymore. The chaos of the cabin’s interior is already beyond any untangling. Time itself loses all meaning. Things that already happened turn around and flow back toward the present. Times yet to come freeze in place, leaving the now hanging up in the air. Total chaos reigns.

  The cabin might as well have been a picture of hell.

  All of sudden, the fear of breaking apart, of being at once momentary and infinite, disappears. K soon regains his composure. It may be that his now-liberated consciousness is finally adjusting to the experience of incorporeal time.