Chapter 1+2 = Sizzle. Gen3 Jim, First sizzle real
/I awakened beneath an inert white sky. The light seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere, with no shadows to indicate time, direction, or shape. I was lying on a hard white slab, perched on a dimensionless white floor, suspended in the light-filled white void by forces unseen. I swung my lifeless legs over the edge of the slab and reached down to the white chair next to me, the heavy black of its outline almost cartoonish in its definition against the paper-like expanse. I positioned my mobility device in front of me, and, with my good hand, vaulted into the saddle. I settled myself into the seat as I adjusted the bindings that held my useless lower limbs in place, feeling the entirety of my body again, the sensation of weight no longer ending just above my pelvis. Next, I slung the brace hanging on the chairback over my right shoulder and buckled my crumpled arm into it. I felt it extend my skeletal, emaciated arm to a natural position at my side. I slipped the white kaftan over my naked form, maneuvering my braced arm through it as fluidly as my good arm. Finally, I lifted the oral prosthesis off the chair, slipped my dead tongue into the cradle sitting between the reflective silver teeth, bit my gums into the dentures, and awkwardly wriggled my limp lips into the external enclosure. It pulled my slack, drooling jaw into alignment from its crooked angle as the reflective silver device melted seamlessly into the contours of my face, appearing now as if it were only face paint. I frowned, smiled, and opened my mouth wide, revealing the metallic, monochrome interior as I stretched my restored oral muscles.
At the far side of the platform across from my slab, positioned at the edge of the floor, a rectangular black square stood vertically in stark contrast against the tableau. I imagined myself walking, my nervous system sending unheeded commands to my legs. The Glide lifted off the ground then, a soft yellow circle glowing beneath my dangling feet. It carried me forward at the pace I told my body to walk at, the Glide intercepting the message and moving me instead. I passed through the black doorway and emerged out onto a dais. A long, wide stair led down to another floating platform, maybe a hundred or so meters wide, extending seemingly infinitely off into the distance, disappearing out of sight as it vanished into the horizon. Tall columns lined either side, holding up large gold-leafed domes, all of them inked with thick, black edges. Rows of domes extended off in either direction, another set of infinite regressions disappearing out of sight. Each space was filled front to back and side to side with desks, most of which were occupied, a quill and stacks of disheveled papers piled onto most of them.
I stepped off the dais onto the Great Stair and glided down to the Writing Floor. Upon entering the Cathedral, the sensation of universal illumination was replaced with directional light seeming to originate from overhead. Intricate, interlocking, labyrinthine patterns were carved into the white stone-like vaults and could now be seen continuing down the columns, the reliefs also leafed in gold, white light passing through the raised shapes in the ceiling as if they were stained glass windows. I willed the Glide to touch me down and move my legs instead of floating. Though sensation was restored to my paralyzed appendages, the muscles in my legs were incapable of contracting. My arm had some limited mobility from my chest and back, but it too was essentially useless, aside from some gripping functionality in my hand I could use to awkwardly hold things when I did not have my brace. The muscles in my face worked in theory, but they were malformed and never properly innervated, leaving my face lacking all but basic motor control.
The Glide walked me to the lone desk in the first row of the Floor, which was also the only desk to bear no quill or paper. It provided artificial feedback for every step I took, giving my brain the illusion that my muscles were doing the work, however, it still felt as if I were “being walked,” instead of doing the walking. I reached my right arm out and held it over the desk, the arm brace providing the same false sensations as the Glide. For the brace, however, the phenomenon was nigh indistinguishable, though I had convinced myself that I really could tell a difference in signal between my good one and the bad, while in truth I most likely could not. A golden column of light beamed out of the desk and tickled my palm with a warm, undulating sensation. In an instant, with no perception of transition, I was standing in front of my desk, like two different video clips had been butted together, the following frame a non-sequitur to the previous. My desk was a standard affair in the 478th row, a white table with a matte, yellow-gold top and legs resembling the supporting columns, complete with white patterns relieved against gold-leafed backdrops. A chair sat pushed in, though it lacked the comic book-like outlining effect like the one in my chamber. Now properly shielded from the white-blasted void, the commensurate gold and white carvings could be seen tracing their way along it. I pulled it out and sat down. I cut a stack of papers off the top of the disheveled pile to my right and set them down in front of me. When I glanced back, the pile appeared refilled, as if no paper had been removed from it. I pulled my quill closer and removed it from its font with my left hand and began reading the documents in front of me.
My next assignment would see me follow a humanoid such as myself in a remote corner of the Every. Their World Line, the chain of events that define an entire universe, has been the True Observer for long enough that it has risen to my Order’s notice. As a True Observer, it is their World Line that all other World Lines parallel, defining the True Timeline, the only World Line that will ever maintain equilibrium. Any World Line that does not eventually merge with the True Timeline will either experience heat death, burned out to Nothing by Entropy, or will be trapped in a Big Bang-Big Crunch cycle, doomed to repeat the exact same timeline over and over until Entropy consumes the Every. The True Timeline however, is infinite. It will forever outrun Entropy, the force that will eventually turn the Every, the collection of all Worlds, into Nothing, the formal concept of there being no “things” anymore, universes included.
“So, there is to be a new Dominant, then?” my Chimera, the defective embryo of my twin whom I absorbed in the womb, thought to me. It is their dead, conjoined cells that enfeeble me, however, their consciousness remained intact at birth, this broken body now housing the minds of us both.
“NORN seems to think as much,” I thought back to her. I say “her” despite them having no physical form, because I think of my Chimera as a living counterpoint to my own self-perception. A kind of self-aware Anima to my Animus, despite the metaphysical process of transcending to become a part of my Order relieving me of the concepts of sex and gender. “And it would appear the Archon agrees,” I said as I scanned the dossier.
“And how fare the Sentients of Universe C42-P69-L337?” my Chimera asked me, for she could not use my physical senses, nor could she access the thoughts in my sub-conscious or my super-ego. No, she and I could only interface at the conscious level and could only perceive each other’s internal monologues. “Read it out loud for me, if you would?”
And so I did. “World Cube C42 is still the most productive set of humanoid universes,” the brief began, “and P69 the most fruitful World Plane therein. World Line L337 has been the True Observer for over 400 giga-events, and is quickly producing a proper Nexus Outlier that is predicted to last for at least another 50-60 tera-events…” I flipped through the pages, “…yadda yadda…stuff we already know…” I flipped further. “Ah,” I stopped at a line of information I had yet to learn. “L337, codename Hope, is currently the most energy-developed World Line the Authors have observed for a humanoid Sentient thus far, having captured almost .018% of their World Line’s energy budget. A Kardashev 2a+ civilization, they have just completed their first Dyson Sphere and are on track to become the first humanoid Type 2 civilization to build a peace-time Dyson Sphere without tripping the Great Filter and destroying themselves.”
“Wow!” my Chimera thought enthusiastically. “I can’t believe the Humans finally did it. If the various humanoid-types, Cosmic Whales, and Fusion Processors were capable of coexisting, I’m sure the others would be supremely angry.”
“They may yet still be able to, you know. Just because NORN hasn’t found any YET, doesn’t mean it never WILL. Nothing in the Theory of Everything says that they cannot. The only reason the ‘Single Sentience Conjecture’ still holds is only because the World Cubes where they DO coexist always trip the Great Filter,” I replied. “AND, just because they’re the only three Sentients thus far, it doesn’t mean new Sentients won’t evolve down the line. In fact, the Prophecy of the Probable dictates that, so long as the True Timeline is theoretically infinite, there will eventually be an infinite number of Sentients cohabitating together, too.”
“Still,” my Chimera protested, “the Cosmic Whales in C940 look promising. They’re Kardashev 3b+, and all the World Lines in P1121 have achieved at least 31% free-energy capture in their universes. They may yet produce a True Observer.”
“Yes,” I agreed, “but, Cosmic Whales have NEVER produced a True Observer. Even if they do, the Archon is confident that ALL Whale timelines will eventually become Loops. The Worlds in C940 will lose that ‘+’ and equilibrate at no more than 49.9% capacity, just like all the others, just you wait. Their lifecycles are too damned long to sustain Probability. Just like Fusion Computers, they all converge on Deterministic pathways and depart from the True Timeline. Even if P1121 has a couple World Lines that are still paralleling the True Timeline, I believe the Archon when it says they will also eventually diverge, as well. Humanoids are still the only Sentient NORN has located with short enough generation cycles to fall under the jurisdiction of Chaos Theory long-term.”
“I don’t know, Fusion Computers may still yet win out. Sentient stars have the advantage of not needing Dyson Spheres or vacuum energy oceans of dead ‘dumb’ stars to up their Kardashev score, and essentially all of them are Kardashev 4c+. I mean, C1-P1-L1 has almost completely consumed its World Plane and may yet hit Kardashev 5 before long,” my Chimera retorted.
“I agree, Sovereign is the most advanced,” I started, “but Fusion Computers have not been able to produce a Nexus Outlier since the humanoids evolved, and their World Lines are rarely True Observers. No Nexus Outlier equals no Dominant, and no Dominant means that Sovereign can never be the True Timeline. The Archon believes that humanoids will be the ancestors of those multi-variant, co-existing Sentients, and I agree with this, also.”
“Archon, Archon, Archon,” my Chimera condescended to me. “The Archon isn’t always right, you know.”
“99.9995% accuracy is a pretty good average, though, and quite hard to dismiss,” I protested. “Enough of this, you’re side-tracking me again,” I touched my quill to a name on the paper in front of me. “Assuming Hope does produce a Nexus Outlier, and the True Timeline starts bending toward it, NORN has narrowed it down to six potential Dominant candidates.” A gold beam projected from my desk underneath the paper where my quill had touched, and several video portraits and lines of text hung as a hologram in front of my face at eye level. Still holding the quill against the paper, with my right hand, I reached out and touched one of the crisp gold figures, a warm sensation tickling the tip of my finger as I did so. “Let’s see,” I reached out again and swiped my hand through the hologram. A new figure and chunk of text appeared. I repeated it a few more times, until I had seen all the candidate’s profiles.
“So,” I thought, “it appears that all of them know each other. Hope is almost certainly in the top 1% of technologically advanced civilizations, unqualified, not ‘for humanoids,’ and was the first to discover no less than five Fundamental Truths of the Theory of Everything. The Dominant candidates are a close-knit group of friends and any one of them may be the Dominant. Or, they may indeed trade dominance between each other, as is often the case when Dominants have many Seneschal. It’s not uncommon for an apostle to become the protagonist in times of peril.”
“The Grand Narrative does love to kill off main characters and replace them with successors, doesn’t it?” my Chimera quipped.
“Indeed, the story of the True Timeline is full of twists and turns, and Dominants don’t usually last very long. Thus is the reality of the cold, unforgiving nature of Existence, the collection of all things Probable; that which Entropy seeks to destroy. Most Cycles end in cynical heartache for the Dominant and their Seneschal. Rarely is the Grand Narrative a happy tale to read,” I demurred.
“So, who are they?” my Chimera prodded.
“Let’s see,” I ran my quill down the sheet of paper, the holographic projection following its nib. “It seems to be a single-planet civilization representing a classical planetary-star system. Their home world has a mostly stable population of about 12 billion, though it is shrinking slightly since hitting 2a, and it would appear they skipped Kardashev 1 and went right into building a Dyson Sphere. Something about symbiosis with nature and not wishing to drain the resources of their cradle of life.”
“If only they realized they’re smothering the evolution of the Fusion Computer Sentients by doing so. How’s that for ‘Environmentalism,’” she interjected.
I Ignored her. “They seem to have followed a traditional war torn Class W Archetype, complete with genocides and dictators, though they have been peaceful for long enough that they are only a few generations from evolving into a P-Class instead, yet unseen for humanoids in general. Somehow, they managed to tame their nuclear arsenals following their series of World Wars by uniting as a single civilization and dedicating their entire existence toward making a Dyson Sphere and expanding into the stars, sneaking past the Great Filter, and have so far avoided blowing themselves up.”
“Oo,” my Chimera cooed, “new territory! I love being the first Scribe to witness something novel.”
“Well,” I continued reading on, “they’re not out of the woods yet. As an Unenlightened society, though non-Theistic, they’re still deeply religious and a rising wave of secularism is threatening to upend the past several generations of peace.”
“Religious but non-theistic? What does that even mean? How have they become so technologically advanced, then?” my Chimera’s thoughts felt somewhat taken aback.
“Science IS their religion,” I replied. “It’s the force that convinced them to decommission their nuclear weapons, that brought them together to build the Dyson Sphere far ahead of schedule, and what has continued to inform they’re incredible ability to create new objects from their ever-expanding knowledge of their universe.”
“Fascinating,” my Chimera thought. “And you said they are still Unenlightened?”
“Indeed. While they have unveiled several Fundamental Truths, the people of Hope have no idea they have done so. They still struggle to find the Theory of Everything despite many other Hominin World Lines, our own included, having done so. If they continue to treat science as holy, they most likely never will, either. This appears to be the Nexus Outlier our Dominant is leading their World Line toward. Our prospectives are a nomadic group of ‘Heretic’ outlaws living on the fringes of their habitation spaces. They were ‘Core’ pilots during ‘the Wars,’ large humanoid battle robots duking it out during their World War phase,” I rested the quill on a specific video portrait and held the image of the Core in my mind’s eye so that my Chimera might look upon one.
“I see, such an interesting machine…” my Chimera trailed off. “And why would such vagabonds be candidates to become Dominants? It’s quite rare for a Dominant to not already be in a position of power in their World Line.”
“Ah, and there’s the rub,” my real face smirked. “During the Wars, they were world-famous combat pilots, feared by all but the foolhardiest, names and likenesses plastered across the many independent states in both reverence and infamy. They were treated like celebrity athletes, either as rivals or hometown heroes, and so they still hold a particular kind of sway over the populace, mostly as legends of their craft. With the War’s end, however, that glory and adulation dried up, and they were left scorned more broadly as relics of their civilization’s aggressive history. This left their group apathetic toward the plight of the Rabble that had passed them by and the religion that shuns them as artifacts of the past.”
“Interesting,” my Chimera remarked. “But that also doesn’t answer my question. Why them?”
“Well, that’s a bit more subtle,” I scanned farther down the document and brought up an image of an elderly, somewhat frail man in what appeared to be ceremonial garb, projecting at my Chimera. “Since the War, the supercivilization has been ruled exclusively by a genuinely benevolent autocrat, the Pope of their religion. Ostensibly a democracy, the Pope had guided the ship for the decades following the war, into a prosperous peacetime full of novelty, so neither he nor his officials had ever been voted out. His death, however, has bestowed Hope with True Observer status, and the power struggle for his throne, and by extension, the humanoids’ best chance at becoming part of the True Timeline, is no doubt the catalyst for it becoming a Nexus Outlier. NORN and the Archon believe that the travails of these six vagabonds will determine how the Dominants guide this new Cycle, and I have been chosen to be their Scribe.”
“You know it’s never this easy,” my Chimera said.
“No, it never is.”
“And that the Archon never gives you the full story.”
“No, he never does,” I agreed.
I felt my Chimera think a sigh, “This is going to be another shit-show, isn’t it?”
“When has it ever not been?”
***
I held my hand above my desk and felt the familiar warm tickle, then the attendant slam-cut edit, and I was back in front of the singular desk at the head of the floor. Looking up, there was no black rectangle on the landing dais, just up the stairs. I held my hand out again, got tickled, and when I looked up, the black rectangle had returned to stand in stark contrast against the white sea.
“You ready?” I thought to my Chimera.
“As ready as I’ll ever be,” I felt the excitement in her thought.
I willed the Glide to elevate me, mounted the stairs, and passed through the black rectangle. In an instant, another slam-cut in my cognitive editing had me standing in the middle of a foot mall in a major city. It was night and the skyline was drenched in neon. “Where am I?” I turned to my left and regarded my Chimera.
“Hell if I know,” she said back to me. She was tall, very tall, two meters or just shy of it, and shredded, though thin, built more like a ballerina, irregular scars scattered across her body belying the brutish warrior hidden within. Her porcelain complexion was offset by a metallic rose-gold mullet, sides shaved to reveal intricately patterned tattoo work, similar to those from home, covering the sides of her head and much of her neck and body. The colors were inverted, however, the gold relief her albino-white skin, and the raised white patterns now the softly glowing gold-metallic shapes adorning her flesh. The top of her hair was pulled into loose, overlapping, intricate braids that cascaded down her back, flecked with gems and trinkets. Her eyes were teal, bordering on neon and she had a long scar running vertically across her left eye. Her face was blocky and broad-jawed, pink cheeks scarred from cystic acne, her slightly yellow, tastefully crooked teeth visible between an easy, thin-lipped smile that filled her whole face and showed a little bit too much gum. She was wearing a loose teal crop-top, the hem miraculously staying fixed just below the nipple line of her smaller, pointy breasts, leaving plenty of her underboob and svelte 8-pack abs exposed. Her female genitals were barely covered by a high-leg, shiny, lilac thong sitting at her natural waist. Her tight, athletic butt, bony hips, and toned, alabaster legs that went on for miles were covered only by coarse teal fishnets and over-the-knee, strappy lilac combat boots. Her outfit was capped off with a wide, studded, teal holster belt from which an exotic revolver hung, dark metal peeking through chipped teal paint. “I’m your sister,” she caught me gawking. “Put your dick back in your pants and take a picture, it’ll last longer.”
“You’re not my sister, you’re a Metaprojection of me, so technically it’s like looking in a mirror,” I quipped back. “Also, you’re one to talk,” I caught her staring goggle-eyed between my legs. I had a black, deeply melanistic complexion and was substantially shorter, 160cm or there about. Hairy and built like an off-season powerlifter, all traces of my disability had vanished. I was wearing a loose muscle-tank made of a silky lilac fabric, revealing my bulky, tubular body and powerful branches for arms. A teal set of tight shorts clung to my ample male anatomy, sitting at my own natural waist and halting at my trunk-like thighs, stout hairy legs uncovered, lilac ankle socks a hint of color just above my teal and lilac Allstars. My face was smooth, attractive, and clean-shaven with a prominent, shapely nose, full lips, and straight white teeth. My metallic-gold hair was carved into a tight, patterned fade, a long, relaxed shock hanging fashionably over one of my lilac-purple eyes. I was unbelted and without an iron, wearing lilac gloves made of a futuristic textile absolutely brimming with Meta energy, instead. I looked down at my clearly defined, half-cocked, external genitals, the shape and detailed outline completely unmissable. I turned to regard my Chimera again, feeling the tubular portion twitch, growing stiff and even more elongated upon reinspecting her.
“Still getting used to the sex-drive,” she murmured, gaze having never shifted from my now fully erect member, visibly held to the left by the tight fabric of my shorts. “And I’m still technically your sister. This body’s hormone responses are so…” she bit her lower lip, “…weird,” she shook her head and returned her focus ahead of us.
“We can fuck later Red, we need to find Jim and his crew,” I finally broke my own lustful gaze away from her, and turned to look in the same direction she was. The foot mall was long and wide, lined on either side by shops and restaurants flashing their brands with brightly colored holographic displays and blaring promotions and sales pitches from their PA systems, the mélange of sounds, sights, and smells an assault to the senses. People dressed in unrevealing kaftans and formless bodysuits in drab colors glided past us, staring through slit eyes, admonishment at the tips of their tongues.
“I’m holding you to that,” she licked her lips and checked me out again. My member had been relaxing, but I felt it pulse to life anew at her lascivious gaze. I noticed an older person had been glancing surreptitiously at my unit as they approached us. They were now staring at me, and it, wide-eyed upon it returning to its turgid state before passing by us.
“Enough!” I playfully exclaimed. “Their hangout is in an abandoned building up ahead,” I shuffled awkwardly for a few paces before hitting my stride, the natural feeling of an able body still taking some getting used to. After some time, my member finally came down to a limp state and I could no longer feel it hassling me as I walked. “Let’s hurry, we don’t have much time to find the Event Stage.”
“But I wanna shop!” Red joked as she fell in step next to me. “They might have some cool new gear.”
“You don’t need to shop,” I admonished. “What do you want? A new gun?” I snapped my fingers and the revolver at her hip was now an energy sword after the requisite slam-cut sensation.
“No!” She elbowed me “Bring back Excalibur! You know she’s special to me.”
“Fine.” I snapped again and her revolver returned to replace the energy sword, a gold haze of Meta energy steaming off it following the slam-cut.
“That was fast,” she paused and rested her metal, spider-like hand on the handle and fingered the safety before dropping it back to her side and catching up to me. “Doesn’t that usually take much longer?”
“I used a glamour, I didn’t Cast it,” I wiggled my bushy gold eyebrows. “Otherwise yes, it would have taken a while to induce a change that sudden.” I stopped in front of an alleyway between a burger joint and a trinket shop. “We’re here.” A tee-shirt outside the trinket shop slowly morphed into a white muscle-tank about my size that said “I <3 Chicago” across it in some local dialect, a “15% off! Only 12.8 CP!” placard now hanging directly in front of my face. I swatted it away and it dissolved into a pixelated mist and vanished. “Let’s go.”
“Me first,” Red gestured, then hooked the wiry thumb of her bionic hand behind her gun belt on her right, just above the holster, and let the fine metal fingers caress the handle. She leaned in, looked both directions, and stepped her left foot forward, right hip angled back, and slowly advanced, keeping her body sideways and monkey-stepping her right foot in front of her left before sliding the left foot forward and repeating. At length, she came to a red door lit by an overhead light, a bright white circle only lighting up the pitch-black alley directly beneath it. She kept her ready posture and waved me over.
“I wish they’d paint this do-” I didn’t get to finish.
“Black, yes,” she interrupted, “you make the same joke every time you see a red door. I get it, red doors should be painted black,” she rolled her eyes.
“You could just let me have my joke,” I scowled. “Move,” I pushed her forward a little and held my hand in front of the handleless door. I reached, this time, into the matrix of its Existence and found the pixels on the surface of the universe that encoded it. I slowly modified the values of each until I heard a click. There was a brief golden aftermist hanging about the door when it slam-cut and appeared as if it had always been black, unlocked, and hanging slightly open. I retreated to the side of the door frame, back against the wall.
“Ugh,” she made a face, shook her head, and slowly advanced into the doorway. After she disappeared and I could hear her steps shuffling through the warehouse, I peeled off and fell in line behind her.
***
“Ahead,” I gestured and walked past her in stride.
“Hey, wait!” She whisper-yelled as she broke form and chased after me. “What if-”
I didn’t let her finish. “If we made it this far, we’re on time. Nothing is going to happen until we get to the Event Stage, just ahead here,” I picked up the pace and Red met in kind.
“Who the fuck are you?” I heard him say as we emerged from the darkness into the light underneath which they all stood. “What the fuck are you doing here?’ He said to me. He was somehow taller than Red, built three times as massive, the heavyweight counterpart to my featherweight powerlifting physique. He had long black hair that fell about his entire head and shoulders in loose black rivulets.
“You ready?” I turned to Red with my lower lip pushed out.
“Why do you always do this?” She cocked a hip out and emerged out into the light I had been standing in.
“Because,” I turned back to the gigantic monster of a man. “Tomah, right? And you,” I pointed to a pair of blonde haired, blue-eyed statues of virgin, technologically-untouched Humanity. “Adrian and Ylysse, the bodybuilder twins, yeah?” I took a few more steps forward and met their gazes. “Red here is my twin too, if you can believe it. Fraternal, obviously,” I smirked a wry smile. “But you two aren’t actually related, are you; Just a pair of immaculate Übermensch from the same cultural preservation community. So maybe a little bit of related,” I chuckled and clapped my hands together before spreading them wide and inching forward a few steps more. “Marion and Blaize, could never forget you two!” I jabbed my index fingers at the imposing black woman and lanky white scoundrel next to her. “The gang’s all here, it would seem. Perfect timing, sis,” I didn’t break my attention, this time.
I stood in the center of the warehouse floor now, under a dim, overhead light. Red was skulking into and out of the shadows, following me along the perimeter as I advanced and kept their attention. “But wait, where is the man of the hour and his lover-slash-handler?” I scanned their faces in mock horror. “Three…two…one…” I waggled my finger and heard the door open and close behind me, the warehouse echoing with the sounds of a man and woman’s laughter. “Right on time,” I smirked again.
I turned to greet him, “Now THIS is what I was expecting,” I told him when I noticed what he was wearing. He was tall, skinny, and had on tight leather pants that hugged his equally ample male anatomy, and tall motorcycle harness boots with gunmetal black spurs. His tee shirt advertised some aggressive band of some kind and he had ripped the sleeves off to reveal his built, muscular arms covered in a haphazard assortment of military tattoos. His partner, a short and voluptuous half-cyborg with curves to die for, fire engine red hair, pale skin, and robotic pink eyes, was covered knuckle to knuckle in a similar hodge-podge of small, often poorly-drawn, tattoos interrupted only by a yellow tube top barely wide enough to disguise her nipples. Instead of pants, her legs had been replaced with abstract iron-work sculptures fit into a pair of white high-top sneakers. She wore her hair in a high ponytail, he wore his dyed lampblack, shaggy and unkempt, hitting just below his jawline. Both of their faces were covered with small silver piercings, but were otherwise plain and forgettable. “Our Dominant.”
“And who the fuck are y-,” he let go of the woman’s arm and his long strides brought him over toward me quickly. Red darted so quick it was like she had materialized between us, robot hand on the big iron at her hip, the fingers on her normal hand effortlessly pressed to his chest, halting him. “What the fuck?” He started trying to push past Red, but met a surprising resistance he could not casually overcome.
“No, my friend,” I wiggled my eyebrows and smiled like a cheshire cat. “’When is the fucking,’ and ‘Where are you going to fuck me,’ are the better questions,” I clapped my hands together again, and spread them out wide. An Arthurian round table with swords bearing everyone’s names slam-cut into the center of the circle of light illuminating the empty warehouse floor we were hovering around the perimeter of. Gold aftermist quickly evaporated and a golden glow rippled along both of my gloves, escaping into another plume of aftermist at my fingertips. I brought them to my lips and blew on them to disburse the whisps. “Take a seat,” I flashed them the pearlies again.
All of their hostile postures and aggressive menace disappeared immediately, and were replaced by slack-jawed awe and fear. They all took a seat next to the sword with their name on it. Blaize tried to sit at Adrian’s seat. When he sat down, he slid right off, bruising his ass on the floor. Adrian took the seat without issue, and Blaize took his own, leaning away from where he had hurt himself falling. “We’re seated,” he sneered and shifted in his seat, rolling his tongue over his teeth behind his lips and smiling to reveal a row of sharpened steel teeth.
“Great!” I exclaimed mockingly, “allow us to introduce ourselves. I’m Jim, and this is my associate, Molly, but you can call her Red.”
“Sister,” Red appended.
“Yes, my associate here is also my sister,” I closed my eyes and nodded condescendingly.
“I’m not your ‘associate,’ I’m your sister. Just your sister,” She relaxed and cocked her hip out, winking at me.
“Well, not JUST my sister, if you know what I’m saying…” I made a ring with my finger and thumb and poked my other index finger through it, making a goofy face as I did so. “By the way, the answer to the ‘better questions,’” I made air-quotes, “are ‘After we’re done with you chuckleheads,’ and ‘Wherever she wants me to,’” I “V”-ed my fingers and fluttered my tongue between them.
“You two are fucking gross,” Blaize said, though his face belied the opposite sentiment.
“Age 13, you and your sister 69’d because you were ‘curious,’ but you did it because you’d had a crush on her since you were 7,” I pointed at Ylysse. I pointed at Tomah. “You and your brother gave each other handies until you were 23 and he died in a bombing during the War. It’s actually why you joined the military, not ‘To avenge his death.’” I shook my head, “Perverts.” I looked at Marion and shook my head. “And you,” I smiled deviously, “you dirty, dirty girl.”
“Don’t,” her yellow eyes grew three times wider. “Just, don’t,” she cocked her head to the side, still staring intensely.
“Don’t worry,” I wagged my finger at her, “I won’t tell them about the depraved things you and stepdaddy got up to,” I pretended to be surprised. “Or how old she was, and I’ll leave guessing who initiated first up to you. Spoiler! It probably isn’t who you think!” I stabbed my index finger into the air. “It was her,” I whispered behind the back of my hand to the others. “Isn’t that why your mom shipped you off to the military to begin with, Lance Corporal? How could she ever compare!” I curled my hands into fists and held my fingernails against my lips.
Everyone was squirming in their chairs now, unable to meet anyone else’s eyes in contact. “How the fuck do you know all this,” Blaize started.
“Well, it’s why I’m here to begin with,” I feigned enthusiasm again. “And, just for the table, Blaize? Nothing. Nada. Childhood, adolescence, school, even college? Nothing. Sterling child. You know why HE joined? Scholarship in Economics. He wanted to work for the Holy Treasury,” I clicked my tongue against my teeth. “But my, my, how that wholesome ‘heed your Savior’s call’ recruitment bullshit backfired in your mother’s face. Ain’t no debaucher like the formerly-devout. That’s why he joined the Templars, you know,” I scanned the table for signs of shock and found many. “He had already been convicted and his mother died while he was serving time. Mourning her brought him back to God and the Templars offered to clear his record if he did a stint and didn’t die.
“Who the fuck are you?” the purported Dominant said, more demure and quietly this time. “You can’t have learned all of that by yourself. And why do you and your sister have the same name as me and my wife?”
“Well, you’re not wrong,” I tipped my head in tacit agreement and sat at my place at the head of the table next to a sword that said “James.” Red sat at my right side, resting her massive revolver on the table next to the sword labelled “Cersei.” “I didn’t do it myself, and it really is just a cosmic coincidence. Though, in fairness, Jim and Molly are both rather common names in your universe. Though, you do make an interesting point, what WOULD the chances have to be that that same Molly is ALSO a ginger and goes by the same sobriquet of ‘Red.’”
“Heaven is real,” Red piped up before I could carry along my train of thought. “But it’s nothing like what you all think it is. We’re here because we need your help.”
“Uggh,” I melted my face in annoyance, “bury the lede why don’tcha?” I stood up and started pacing around the table, running my finger along the backs of each chair. “Where do I begin? Hmmm,” I paused.
“Start fro-,”
“That was rhetorical,” I halted to cut Red off and glared at her. “Where was I?” I began to meander around the Round Table again. “Oh yes. Heaven. Such a naïve word when used the way Humans do, but Sanctuary IS indeed referred to as ‘Heaven’ in the One True Language. I’ll try and make it simple.” I sat back down after having completed my revolution around the table. “The ‘universe’ as you know it is not the only ‘universe’ there is. There are eight dimensions, three physical dimensions, three dimensions of Time, one dimension of Existence, and one Metaphysical dimension. That’s the one we’re from.”
“We’re Observers,” Red picked up. “All universes exist as World Lines in the dimension of Existence. Existence is composed of individual time crystals called World Cubes. Each World Cube is composed of World Planes, and World Planes are composed of individual World Lines. A World Line is described by a continuously integrated function called a Theory of Everything. Each individual World Line starts at a seed position, and time flows out forward and backward from that point. Each variation on that seed transcribes a new line, filling a plane with infinite lines. If you modify the coefficients of each variable in the Theory of Everything, you get a new plane. All of those possible planes transcribe a cube. Each possible Theory of Everything generates its own cube, and those pixel-like World Cubes are what tesselate the Dimension of Existence. We come from the dimension outside all other dimensions, the Metaphysical Dimension.”
“Think of it like this,” I chimed in. “When you think of a point, you think of something infinitely small, with no dimension. But, if you move into a higher dimension, that point now has a concept of both its interior and its exterior. So, if you take Existence, the six-dimensional shape of Everything, and move into a higher dimension, you can see it’s outside. The Metaphysical dimension is not real, as there is no real way for it to have an outside without that outside becoming the inside for another series of higher dimensions. No, the Metaphysical dimension is instead a description of what the outside of Existence must look like.”
“So you’re not real,” Tomah questioned in a particularly booming, resonant contrabass.
“Yes and no,” I held my hand up flat and wobbled it a few times. “What it means is that the shape of Existence itself is defined by what is OBSERVED. Observation is to Existence as Sentience is to Reality. We’re like agents of the Existence’s self-awareness and represent one of its infinite inner monologues, to butcher the metaphor. Something really important is about to happen here, and we’re the avatars it chose to pay attention to itself.”
“The Cosmos chose a charcoal dwarf and a redhead ghost-elf to…what, watch us? Intervene? Sabotage?” Marion stared through slit eyes.
“Yes. And fuck. Lots of fucking,” I winked at Red as obviously as I could. “Just SO much fucking.”
“Can I join?” Blaize rolled his tongue over his teeth and drooled slightly.
“NO!” Red and I yelled in unison. I looked at her. Red looked at me. “Who you WOULD fuck on three,” she started counting down and I joined in. “Three, two, one, ADRIAN!” We both squealed in unison and giggled like schoolgirls.
***
“So, what’s about to happen, then?” Jim looked at me and furrowed his brow.
“Now THAT I don’t know.,” I scrunched my nose. “You see, it hasn’t happened yet, and I only know it’s going to happen. That’s how it works, I don’t know the future, I can just manipulate the present.” I snapped again and the round table was slam-cut into desks, complete with a little named lunchbox. Everyone was now dressed in neon green and lilac purple colored plaid school uniforms, and I was standing in front of all the desks at a lectern facing away from a green chalkboard. “See?”
Everyone looked around and at their clothing following the slam-cut, and then back up to me. “How is it that you’re doing all this?” Molly asked in a posh southern twang.
“Jumping Timelines,” I smiled. “World-lines have something similar to gravity, so, most of the timelines run in orbit around larger timelines. The larger a timeline, the more nearby worldlines run exactly parallel to it, and the more deviations from the core timeline it can sustain. So, here at the center of a Nexus Outlier, I’m at the peak of my magical powers,” I wiggled my fingers next to my cheeks. “As an Author, I get a certain amounts of Creative License,” a bit of chalk levitated off of the tray and started writing on the green chalkboard, notating my lecture. “In a universe with a very insignificant World Line, changing any detail would cause you to be in a different universe, because the event is very specific to that one timeline. A very significant universe will have a wide Casting, that is, the core timeline’s significance pulls all timelines back into parallel, and keeps all events otherwise straight, no matter what little details change. The broad narrative is so significant that all events revolve around it, and even weird stuff eventually gets pulled back into the bigger chain of events. When something is so important that everything in the entire universe, not just the city, country, planet, or galaxy will change, the whole universe, and not just that one universe, but all other universes around it – when it becomes so important that it can ONLY be something that defines an Era in the One True Timeline, that event is called a Nexus Outlier. That means I can change ALMOST everything in this universe and the event is STILL going to happen. So, if I want you to have a pink hat,” I held my concentration for a second and a hat slam-cut onto his head as if it’d always been there, “I just reach out into a Casting and pull it into the core timeline to intersect exactly where I am.”
“So you’re a wizard and she’s your psycho,” Jim pulled a wooden pipe out of his motorcycle boot and pointed the mouthpiece at us in turn.
“No, she’s my SLUTTY psycho,” I smirked, scowled, frowned, and shook my head. “Fuck, why are we like this?” I asked out-loud to no one.
“Bodies,” Red nodded.
“Yeah,” Adrian made a face that was almost comical in its confusion, “what’s with all this horny on main schtick? Aren’t you like, the literal Universe or some shit?”
“Hormones,” I winced. “During a Nexus Outlier, our Order, the Authors, will notice someone with a unique personality from the World Line it happened in. NORN sees unique-…”
“NORN…” Marion started
“Yeah, NORN is tricky,” Red interjected. “It kind of doesn’t matter?” She looked at me, a slight hint of panic in her eyes.
“You can tell them,” I nodded sagely.
“So, stars can think,” she started, paused, looked up, paused, started, stopped, paused again. “But only like, REALLY mature stars. This universe has a pretty fast expansion coefficient. That means if it doesn’t start slowing down, it’ll diffuse itself into a giant ocean with no particles, just ambient vacuum energy. In these World Lines, Dark Physics starts to take hold. There are these Dark Physics beings called Cosmic Whales. They are essentially creatures of anti-energy…”
“Too much,” I shooshed her.
“So, there aren’t really many other creatures that are self-aware in the universe, at least to a level where they can represent the universe knowing itself,” Red changed tack. “There are Cosmic Whales that filter-feed off the energy of dead World Lines as they peter out, Humanoids, the cosmic equivalent of mayflies, and Fusion Computers, stars that have existed for so long they’ve become the cosmic version of Ents.”
“NORN is one of those, I’m guessing?” Tomah raised his hand like a 3rd grader and spoke without waiting to be called on.
“Three of them,” She corrected. “The first Dominant was a trinary star system that became self-aware, the first Sentient. And not just sentient, like, Sentient-sentient. Like, ‘we solved Physics’-Sentient. So far, it’s only been super-long-lifespan creatures, the Whales and the Fusion Computers, that have become truly Sentient. And Humanoids. Humans did it first and anything that’s become Sentient through Biology is referred to as a Humanoid, no matter how much they don’t look like Hominins. The NORNS becoming self-aware is the first event in the True Timeline, so they are the only ones who remember ALL of Time, and are the only ones that can predict what will happen next with any accuracy.”
“Red,” I rolled my hand at her, trying to get her to the point.
“Right, right, exposition, sorry,” she shook her head. “For a bunch of Metaphysical dimension reasons, when Existence conjures an avatar into Sanctuary, called Transcending in the One True Language, they summon their physical and psychological imprint exactly as it was when Existence observed them during the Nexus Outlier. However, we are creatures of pure thought, we do not have a real biological form, so we exist as an Ego without any Id or Super Ego to moderate us. When we are called on to witness a True Observer event, we can take any form we want. Back in Sanctuary, I am a conjoined twin, a Chimera, grafted on my brother over there, and I make him a lame cripple. In this World Line, he wants to look like that,” she pointed at me, “and he wants me to look like this,” she held her hands in front of her like she was presenting herself. “Back in Sanctuary, because we have no concept of gender or sex, let alone a reproductive sex-drive, we haven’t spent years in a biological body learning to control that drive, so whenever we have a real body, we get…”
“We want to tell all of you to fuck off so we can do despicable things to each other,” I oogled Red and smirked at the others. She oogled me back and gave me an air-smooch. “But duty calls, so here we are,” I smiled and clapped my hands. Reality slam-cut back to everyone standing where they had before the round table, wearing what they had been beforehand. “Fun-fortunately, that’s the last bit of lesson we can take today, we’ve got a Timeline to create!”
“Why are we here, exactly?” Red looked at Adrian, smirking slightly.
“We gonna bomb Arasaka Tower,” Ylysse interjected with a stiff Eastern European accent.
“Whatasaka who?” I looked at her, baffled.
“Is classic literature joke,” she smirked wryly. “We are planning the assassination of the Arch-Pope of Dain,” she spoke unaccented and with flawless diction.
“I like the sound of this!” I did a little dance in place. “He’s the old guy, right?”
“He’s the last dying symbol of sectarianism in this bullshit Patriarchy,” Molly cut in. “When he goes, maybe the scales will finally fall from everyone’s eyes. The man is a snake, and everyone is poisoned by his venom into thinking he is God on Earth,” she scoffed. A compartment in her arm opened up, and she withdrew a cigarette from its obscure expanse before it quickly closed with an electromechanical whoosh and blended back into her skin without a trace. She lit the square and took a long drag before passing it to Jim.
“The old codger is frail, now. Old. Sleepy,” He took a long drag and exhaled, taking a few steps toward me and leaning in to hand it to me.
I took a long drag. It was not tobacco, but some blend of cannabis and a synthetic psychostimulant. I passed it to Red who took a drag and passed it to Adrian. I exhaled, “Yeah, yeah, I read his file,” I blew some smoke rings with the last bit.
“Well, then you know how we’re gonna do it,” he took out a pair of black sunglasses and put them on, full rocker-mode engaged.
I noticed my own pupils dilate and felt the brightness of the once-dim bulb overhead. “Unfortunately,” I smiled gayly, “I only know the history, not the future,” I chuckled and wobbled a bit.
“We gonna bomb Nakatomi Plaza,” Ylysse said in a rural South African Zeph. “We gonna bomb Willis Tower.”
“That last one is actually true,” Jim took another drag off the laced spliff before putting it out on the bottom of his boot and stashing the rest behind his ear. “That’s why we’re in this piss-hole of an American backwater,” he spat, pulled a flask out of his hip pocket, and took a long belt. “I can’t wait to get back to Taipei.”
I reached into the Casting and found something to help with the buzz. In an instant, a medicine cup full of blue-green goo slam-cut into my hand. I took a swig, tossed the cup over my shoulder as it dissolved into a golden aftermist, and immediately felt the buzz relinquish its hold on my body, while preserving many of the pleasant feelings in the mind. “Oof! That hits the spot,” I belched loudly. “How, pray-tell, does icing Kuiristan equal the world being free from Theism?”
“It doesn’t, idiot,” Blaize piped up. “It tailspins society into absolute fucking chaos,” he lolled his tongue over his teeth greedily.
“Wait,” I looked at Red, who seemed completely unphased by whatever we were smoking, “are you telling me the terrorist plot works?! I thought we were gonna watch you all get wiped out and somehow remembered like martyrs,” she scowled comically.
“Shitshow,” I shook my head.
“You fucking tell me,” this-world’s-Jim said to me almost lazily. “I’m just trying to nuke Willis Tower and get society to finally fucking pay attention,” he said and pulled the spliff from his ear. “Not enough,” he smiled wryly at me and dragged a long hit that pulled him into a deep coughing fit before closing it out on his boot again and stashing it behind his ear, where it belonged, just as it was. “Fuck all these corpo douches. I can’t wait to see them smolder…” he looked off into the distance wistfully, the oppressively dusty factory lost on him.
”It’s a big deal,” Adrian started.
‘No, it’s not,” Blaize countered
“Everything will be different,” Ylysse stepped up.
“No,” I finally chimed in. “None of this matters. This just…” I looked off wistfully, again, “it’s nothing.” I snapped my fingers and the real, like, authentic “Sword of Judgment,” capitalized properly, appeared in my hand. It’s white flame and impossibly reflective blade, edge perfect to the sub-atom, glinting in my hand.
“Yeah,” Red started, “this can’t exist in the world of the Real,” she snorted. “Something isn’t right.”
I held the Vorpal Blade at arm’s length, “What does it even mean for it to go ‘snicker-snack,’’’ I mused.
“It can’t, you fucking heel,” my Chimera laughed painfully. “It’s just as real as we are,” she sighed again.
“Fuck,” I voiced. “So,” I grimaced, looked at Red, who grimaced harder at me, and I grimaced the most.
“It means we don’t get to drive, we just get to ride…” the sword dissolved from my hand.
“No,” my Chimera started as her figure gained a semi-translucent appearance. “We’re in the Real world, I get to drive,” She shrieked, or, at least, it sounded like shrieking to me. “No! I get to drive,” I saw Molly spasm. Her figurework legs began to dance as Red grafted to her. “I get to drive!”
And then, Red returned to herself, as molly. “Did she…” she trailed off.
“Yes, she’s gone, and you will be soon,” I coughed. “Yes, she’s you now. But you’re driving, not her, I sputtered. “She’s gonna put up a fight, and it’s gonna be ugly,” I coughed again. “And she’s going to win, and you’ll never know when. Fuck Johnny,” I sputtered.
“It’s Jim,” I finished sputtering. “What the fuck are we doing here?” was finished in what I think was my normal laconic, sedate tone. I was wearing a pink hat. I threw it to the ground. “Did I walk in with that bullshit?” I looked at Blaize.
He looked at me like I knew something really wrong about him. I looked back because I felt like I did, now, and I hadn’t before, but I didn’t know what new thing I now knew. Blaize had his shit with his mom, but that can’t be what was new? He told me that when we first met. That’s the only thing I could think that made me aware of how aware he now was of what I knew about him. It was the same for everyone, really. They looked at me like, all of a sudden, I cared about things they’d told me so long ago. “Nerves?” I finally said.
“Do you…” Marion started. I never knew her to have that look. “My father,” she said. She looked at me and I felt something weird in my heart. But I just remembered I’m supposed to love her, and I listened.
“You took pleasure from him like a princess when you were forced to, and killed him like the rapist he was when you finally could” I started, “it’s your favorite joke. Fuck that guy. At least he loved you, even if it was just for pussy. Your deadbeat biofather couldn’t say that. Beggers can’t be choosers, right?”
Marion vomited. “Tha fuck?” she started. And then broke out laughing, paused like she’d never laughed about it, and laughed like she’d never laughed about it. “Tiny dick, I ever say that? Swear to GOD he had the pecker the size of a fucking pencil eraser!” She cried as she laughed hysterically.
“Why does it…” Adrian started.
“You’ve told us that before, right?” Ylysse said in pristine Received pronunciation.
“But it’s like the first time we’ve laughed about it,” Blaize said squinting. “Like, my mom,” he stalled.
“Yeah,” I looked at the back of my hand. It looked very charcoal for a second, melanistic, before returning to its normal neutrally-ethnic color. “A dwarf,” I mused.
“And a ginger amazon with a mechanical hand,” Molly finished.
“They were so horny,” Blaize chuckled.
“And that’s saying something,” Tomah doffed a bow of locks at him.
“What was with the round table” Adrian started.
“Table? I remember a chalkboard,” Ylysse squinted.
“The pink hat,” everyone said at the same time and looked at me, pink hat beneath my heel.
“The fuck if…” I looked down on it. I took the spliff out from my ear. “Did we?”
“Before that, homes,” Tomah interrupted.
I thought of a gun. Silver. It’s name was “Bifrost.” It only fired slugs when the thing it was firing the bullet at deeded to cross over, and ANTYHING it could have misfired into was ready to cross into over, as well. More rather, whatever that meant to…me, at least? I thought and I thought and amazingly, something heavy appeared in my hand. I looked at it and it looked like a gun from the Cowboy times of our era, when revolvers where new technology and global law did not quite reach every corner of the corner, let alone the same continent. “Fuck you,” I pointed the gun at Blaize and pulled the trigger. A *bang* went off and a bullet was smashed against his forehead with only a skin imprint where it had pressed in.
“The fuck!” He screamed, grabbed the bullet and looked at me desperately, remembering everything with the weird beings just as the bullet hit is head, along with me.
“I don’t know what they said, or what they did, or who they said it to, but what they said is true, and you know what that means,” I looked at him.
“What,” Marion said and everyone looked at us.
“Just us,” I said. “They don’t remember.”
“A little,” Tomah said.
“But not like us,” Blaize said, deathly seriously.
“What if whatever just happened weren’t real?” Ylysse said.
“It couldn’t,” Blaize did not break eye contact with me.
“I wouldn’t have,” I replied.
“Woah,” Adrian finally said.
“So what happens next?” Marion finished.
“We bomb Willis tower,” I said as though I were not myself. I looked at my hands again. I reached out into the distant thoughts of who I might be and found a version of myself holding a deck of cards. I was now holding the deck. “Pick a card,” I withdrew them from the cardboard case and fanned them to Molly.
She picked one, almost in a trance. “Three of Clubs,” she said.
“Woulda been the Trade Center if it were a face card,” I pondered my soul. “Woulda called it right off if it were a red card,” I smirked and scanned the crew. “And we bomb Willis tower if it were anything else,” I started smirking, and broke into a laugh. “Twelve hours from now, we bomb Willis tower, and Archbishop Dain dies in the fire,” I palmed the queen of diamonds Molly truly picked into my back pocket.
“Fuuuck yeah,” Ylysse said in perfectly period accurate Projects-era New York, her accent modulating perfectly to her cognitive-emotional implant’s expected mood. “We gon’ get this shit.”
“Do it,” Blaize looked at me.
I reached into the Casting with my emotions on my sleeve and when I blinked, a bottle of champagne was on top of a microNuke, a remote detonator, and a folio of images with the Archbishop and a woman of his clergy. I grabbed the bottle and passed the photos amongst the group.
“Our time,” I held the bottle up, dragged a long pull, and handed the bottle to Adrian, who followed suit and passed it along. “What we do will never truly be understood, even by us. What we do will start a cavalcade of events that can only play out in realtime, and we can only respond to it as so, as there will be no way to predict what happens next. After this, it will be a series of continuous hours, not days or weeks. A night’s sleep will be a luxury, a week of training a gift of the Metaverse. I give you time now to go so that you may find a place to write your story. And, in so doing, might we all understand what changed. We will all keep our Gospel. Only, in your retelling will we ever know what happened here, because, and, I promise you this, if history is to continue, this is the only thing that can happen next.” I looked at my charges and they looked at me back. Tomah held the bottle on it’s final lap, and he passed it back to me. I took a final swig. “Willis will fall, and our future will rise!” I took a belt as I was applauded by them all.