“It sounds exhausting,” said Morion. “How long does this training take?”
“About two hundred years,” said Stimple, now indicating a structure we approached. “This is the armory.”
Two magnificent spires stretched upward at either side of the windowless facade.
“The front door’s open,” I said.
Immediately upon entering the armory, we overheard muted voices coming from a room on the opposite side of the foyer.
“Stay here,” I whispered. “I’ll check it out.”
Stimple hopped on my shoulder. “I’ll come with you.”
With Stimple on my shoulder, I crept to the entrance of the room and peeked around the doorframe. We discovered a scene of torture and cruelty.
A slender female figure lay naked on a table, strapped in place by her wrists and ankles. She seemed old—withered in the eyes and loose in the skin. Her small, round face was drained of all color, unless such was her natural complexion. On her head, instead of hair, three crests of bone emerged from her skin, and ran from her forehead to the back of her skull. Tears fell from the corners of her eyes. She was in pain. Her skin was covered with sores.
One of the smaller and more intelligent-looking beasts hovered over her. Its large eyes burned with rage.
I listened to a conversation I only half understood. The female, obviously of the Brahman Sprawl and born with a biolinguistic lobe, could be understood perfectly, while the black beast spoke in strange clicks and jibbers—apparently the female’s native tongue.
Stimple, fluent in the language, translated the beast’s side of the conversation into my ear.
The beast spoke: “I care about nothing except serving my god. I have no compassion for you. If need be, you’ll suffer an eternity of my jagged touch. Now! Tell me! What’s the pattern of the Obelisks’ dimensional frequencies?”
The female bit her lip in pain. “Must I tell you again? The pattern cannot be deciphered by any man, beast, or god.”
The beast filled a syringe with a toxic-looking substance that released a yellow vapor on contact with the atmosphere. Every muscle in the woman’s body tensed as the beast injected a small bubble of the liquid under the skin of her abdomen.
The beast growled. “I’m both annoyed and impressed by the will you command within that frail form.”
The woman opened her eyes fearlessly. “Tell me, you vile creature, how is it your god can penetrate the dimensional barrier on Earth, and nowhere else in the seven galaxies?”
“I’ll ask the questions!” roared the beast. “However, as a gesture of good faith, I’ll tell you. My god has the ability to focus the totality of his divine energies on a single point in your universe, so to break through the dimensional barrier created by your Obelisks. Consequently, he tires of exerting himself. Now, tell me what I want to know—or else.”
“You’ll kill me regardless.” The woman closed her eyes.
“Don’t shut your eyes! I’ll cut off your eyelids!” The beast turned away from the woman in a frustrated manner and faced a podium. “This compendium of data tells me everything except the pattern of the Obelisks’ dimensional frequencies. It even tells me you’re one of the senior designers of the Obelisks, and that you know exactly what I ask. Maybe it’ll tell me the most painful way to extract this information from your mind.”
While the beast occupied itself with the compendium, I prepared to attack.
My Intersplit gun’s useless,
I thought.
Its black, gnarled flesh is too thick. Yet this particular breed of beast seems less of a fighter and more of a thinker. Its large bulbous head... is it as soft and supple as it appears?
I readied my weapon, but quickly froze when I saw something unsettling in the corner of my eye—next to a rack of transportation carapaces, in a dark alcove of the room, stood a shadowed figure as tall as the ceiling. It was one of the goliath beasts. Its eyes pierced through the shadows and seemed to look in every direction at once.
I withdrew from the doorway and Stimple and I regrouped with the others.
“There’s a woman,” I said softly. “She’s being tortured by one of the smaller beasts. I think we could kill it, if not for the goliath beast standing guard in the shadows. We must speak with this woman. She may be our last hope.”
“I have a plan,” said Orsteen. “The three of you will hide, while I cause a disturbance to lure the goliath beast outside.”
“What then?” I asked, doubtful of his plan.
“It’ll come to me as I go. Now, hide in that room.”
“Wait,” said Morion, grabbing Orsteen’s arm. He made a strange expression, almost one of real courage. “I’ll go. I owe as much.”
Orsteen nodded and handed Morion his Intersplit gun. “Be quick on your feet and even quicker with your wits.”
“We’ll see you soon,” I said, strangely proud of him.
The rest of us hid in a nearby room. With the door slightly open, we watched as Morion exited the armory, crossed the boulevard, and took position in front of a domed structure. I saw him standing idly, as if contemplating his next course of action. Morion then aimed his Intersplit gun back across the boulevard, toward the door of the armory, and fired. Hitting his mark, the door flew off its hinges, causing a ruckus that successfully captured the attention of the goliath beast. It bounded to the door of the armory and searched for the source of the disturbance. Morion fired again, hitting the beast in the chest. Unfazed, the beast moved toward Morion. The chase was on.
We quietly returned to the doorway where the thinker beast tortured the woman. It removed a strange metallic bug from a chamber on a workbench.
Stimple again translated the clicks and jibbers of the beast: “This is a synthetic parasite you use to interlink with a patient’s biolinguistic lobe. Essentially, it’ll open your mind to me. I find myself disappointed at the simplicity and painlessness of the process.”
The black beast applied the synthetic parasite to the woman’s head. With a barbed tentacle, it began boring into her skull.
I crept up behind the black beast, which seemed fascinated by the work of the parasite. I lifted my Intersplit gun to the back of its head.
“Excuse me,” I said calmly.
The beast turned in surprise and I fired. The weapon’s discharge passed through the beast’s eye-socket and into its large, melon head, making a hot mess of its brain.
Orsteen freed the restrained woman who, in a frenzy, clawed at the parasite clinging to her head.
“You couldn’t have come at a better time,” she said, knocking the parasite to the floor. “I would’ve told the beast everything if the parasite entered my brain.”
“You’re safe now,” I said, handing the trembling woman her clothes.
She looked suspiciously at us. “If this is a trick to get the secrets of the Obelisks, I’m on to you.”
Stimple climbed on top of a nearby table. “It’s not a trick, JarNay.”
“Stimple! Who are these people?”
“This is Theron Mobius and his companion, Orsteen Hunn.”
“Theron Mobius?” said JarNay in surprise. “How is this possible? How have you been brought here?”
“It’s a long story,” I said. “Right now, we’re trying to get important information to an Impresario.”
“What of Fandoral?”
Stimple’s eyes drooped. “He’s been given to the next plane of existence.”
“My sympathies, Stimple.” JarNay turned back to me. “As for your need to contact an Impresario, I can’t help. The Fume’s minions have overtaken most of the vital systems on this Guardian Sphere and have corrupted the One Voice. We can communicate with no one.”
“Can you transport us to another Guardian Sphere?” I said.
“I cannot.”
“Aren’t you a Guardian?” I asked. “Don’t you command a transportation carapace?”
“Unfortunately, I only design and outfit them for others.”
“Then you can outfit me with one,” I said. “We have little time to spare.”
“Clearly you’re ignorant about such devices. In order to utilize a transportation carapace, one must undergo strict mental training for a hundred years. You see, in order to move from planet to planet and galaxy to galaxy one must think in tandem with a quantum control plexus. Mind and machine must become one. The mind must be altered severely for this to happen. Only then will the universe come into focus.” JarNay paused for a moment. “And not to sound insulting, but you’re only a double-helix species. You’re lacking the neural sophistication required to think in tandem with a quantum control plexus.”
I sighed, aggravated by the constant obstacles along our journey. “Can you contact another Guardian on this sphere?”
“Like I said before, communications are down, even within the sphere.” JarNay’s head dropped. “And, unfortunately, I don’t believe any Guardians have survived on this sphere.”
I indicated the dead beast. “How is it, JarNay, that the Guardian Army was defeated by the Fume’s minions? From what I’ve seen, their armor makes them nearly invincible, and their ability to transport in an instant makes them impossible to capture.”
“At first, the Fume’s beasts were easily killed. Then, they began to change, adapting their cellular composition to absorb the energy of our weapons. They are a versatile creation. I was able to examine one earlier in the battle.”
JarNay displayed a three dimensional hologram of one of the Fume’s beasts. The computer highlighted the silver nano-fibers that ran through the beast like a second nervous system.
“This network of nano-fibers is how the beasts are able to transform. When the beast wishes to change, molecular instructions are sent through the nano-fiber system to every cell in its body. The necessary metabolism for such transformation is powered by radioactive isotopes infused in the DNA of the beast. But this ability to adapt was only part of their victory. Only when they gained access to the compendium and its vast data were we doomed. They were then able to construct weapons capable of disabling the Guardian’s armor and pushing their transportation carapaces out of dimensional concealment, thus immobilizing the Guardians.”
I fell into a nearby chair and sat thinking. I looked to JarNay stoically. “The people of the Brahman Sprawl have had millions of years to ponder the human condition, to explore the meaning of existence. What do you know of the human soul?”
“The human soul?” JarNay shook her head. “You’re free to access the compendium on religion in the Brahman Sprawl. Death is still the bane of human existence. Such beliefs are still prevalent in calming the fear of the unknown.”
“No,” I said. “I don’t seek faith or fairytales. I seek scientific proof of the soul.”
“If such an inner force exists, it has yet to be discovered, even after twenty-one million years of human existence. Why do you ask such a thing, especially now?”
“The human soul is the reason the Fume manipulates humankind.”
JarNay’s eyes lit up. “You’ve discovered the Fume’s motives?”
“We have. And this is the reason we seek an Impresario. We had hoped someone in the Brahman Sprawl could utilize this knowledge.”
“Please,” said JarNay eagerly. “Tell me what you know.”
I stood up and began pacing the room. “First, you must know that the temporal displacement of the Brahman Station and the evolution of humankind in the Brahman Sprawl didn’t happen by accident. Everything has unfolded as the Fume planned.”
“Why would he want this?”
“The Fume claims that it’s the people of the Brahman Sprawl he now manipulates.”
“How? To what end?”
“He’s planning to use the souls of the Brahman descendents to birth a god, a being of the same exotic energy as himself. It’ll be the end of the universe as we know it. All the energy of the universe will be transformed into this god. The Fume will then be able to cannibalize its divine energies.”
“I’m speechless,” said JarNay. “The truth has surpassed the wildest speculations of the past.” Her eyes gleamed with wonder. “What is the soul? How can the souls of all humankind birth a god?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “But the Fume said some things that resonated deep within me. He said the soul connects the consciousness to the very fabric of the universe. He said the soul is a level of organization that goes beyond the tangible. He said the soul is the precursor to godliness.”
JarNay leaped in front of the compendium. “I’m struck by inspiration. It may be possible to modify a transportation carapace to function like an archway, but it’ll only allow a single trip.”
“How do we choose our destination?” said Orsteen. “With the Fume’s beastly minions on their way to the other Guardian Spheres, there’s no telling which sphere has an Impresario who still lives.”
“Instead of finding an Impresario, you’ll find Nara-Narayana herself. This information is far too important for anyone else.”
I shook my head with uncertainty. “From what Stimple has told us, Nara-Narayana isn’t one to be located—if she exists at all.”
“Few people can attest with confidence that Nara-Narayana is indeed a genuine entity. Fortunately, I’m one of the privileged few.”
“Then you’ll send us directly to her?”
“No, I don’t know her location. But I’ll send you to the only living Guardian who knows how to find her.”