Intermission: The Goddess and the Youth
Sekhenun had taken very little time to get her laboratory up and running. Looking around, I see that most of the equipment is meant for biological work. She notices me glancing at the machines and comes over, adjusting the gloves on her hands.
“I specialize mainly in biology, though I dabbled a bit with transdimensional physics back in the day,” says the alien. “Still, I can’t believe how wonderful things are nowadays. I had to create most of my equipment from scratch. Can you believe how hard it was to find a passable scalpel five thousand years ago?”
“It sounds like you haven’t been keeping an eye on recent… well, relatively recent developments. You said that you were a goddess. What does that mean, exactly?”
“It’s a long story.” She points over to an empty lab bench. “Take a sit over there while I finish up with the frogs.”
She does so. Then, she tells me everything.
Well, almost everything.
***
“So, you call them ‘Masters’.” I say, reflecting on my encounter with one of the beings she claims to have created the immortals.
“You have met them before?”
I nod. “Pretentiously polite, facetious and he got quite annoyed when I didn’t act according to his expectations.”
“Sounds like one of them,” she laughs. “They like to pretend that everything is under their control at all times.”
“You said that they were conducting a great experiment. If it has something to do with their chosen race reaching the center of the galaxy, does it mean that they’re attempting a form of artificial selection?” I ask.
“Yes. When a civilization reaches the core, it is asked to show the Masters what they have learnt. This enriches their own knowledge.”
“What can a god-like civilization learn from creating more primitive ones?”
“The value of knowledge is not only in material advances. They might be searching for some particular answer. They have repeated this cycle countlessly, destroying the universe and creating it anew millions of times. In fact, I am beginning to suspect that my ancestors were actually refugees of a previous civilization that somehow managed to escape the destruction of their universe. In our thousand-year journey through the stars we have never seen any sign of a sentient race other than humanity and the Gieloth. All sentient life appears to have been seeded by the Masters, and they have a distinct preference for humans. Then there’s the tell-tale signs of genetic degradation in my kind-“
“Wait,” I stop her. “Our thousand-year journey?”
“Is there anything wrong with that statement? I travelled with the other guy, of course.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be guardian deities of the Earth or something? I mean, the first thing the two of you do after attaining transcendence is to go off on a millennium-long honeymoon?”
She stares daggers at me. “It was a journey of knowledge and discovery. He just had to find out more about any potential threats to his precious planet. We were called back by your little girlfriend,” says Sekhenun testily. “Good job ruining the world, by the way.”
I look down guiltily and mutter a quick apology, before continuing with my questions. “Kyrie. I was seeing her ghost everywhere for a while there. What was that all about?”
“When we turned ourselves into the flowers our consciousness melded together. It exists as information in a higher dimension, separate from the world. One flower or a thousand, it makes no difference to us. Of course, if they were all destroyed we would have no way back. Now, what happens is that once our minds transcended, our perception grew immensely. The Earth became almost too small for us to perceive properly. You can understand why we turned our attention outwards.”
“I see. When the nanomachines that I derived from the flowers got to work, the information of those who were dissembled were dumped into your consciousness.”
“Hm, you’re not half as stupid as I thought you were. That’s right. We felt a mass of undifferentiated sentience pour into our own. Only one of those minds remained aware of itself – your woman. She managed to hold on to her consciousness and claw out from that sea of minds. She was fearful - not just fear for herself, but fear for you - but she overcame that fear, finding it in herself a tremendous effort of will and determination. That attracted our attention, and we began learning from her just what had happened. It was a gradual process, fraught with disbelief on our part.” Sekhenun chuckles.
“That doesn’t explain why Rei and I could see her.”
“Are you familiar with the theory that things must be observed to exist?”
“Ah,” I nod. “Yes. I am quite familiar with it. You are going to speak of the observer at the center of the multiverse, right?”
“Good, you already caught on. Of course you would; it is your nature. Alright, let us call it the Observer, since that is the name you are familiar with. You already remember your relation to it?”
“I am a terminal of the Observer. Of course, I am not certain if I was born that way, or made to be so during the ritual. It makes no real difference to me. The Observer observes something, and in the act of observing, that thing is. It does so in accordance with the records of fate that it maintains. The Records of Akasha. My interaction with the Observer is limited to being able to delete these records. In one way or another, the powers I exhibit are a representation of that deletion.”
“Hm, you’ve done your studies. Did the cult record all of this?”
“Them?” I had to laugh, remembering the pain they inflicted on me for sneaking into the restricted archives. The documents I retrieved were… dodgy. “They were hoping the Goddess would inhabit a vessel – boy, girl, it did not matter. That was all they thought about. I'm not sure how they got the technology to open a gate to the center of all worlds, and even less sure how they managed to get it to work. It is like expecting to replicate a creation myth by stirring water into a ball of mud. No, I gradually figured it out for myself. Part of me has had a lot of time to do so.”
“It is strange that Rei doesn’t seem to really know about all this.”
“I don’t think she would. She seems to treat her powers as a blessing, something not to be questioned.” I reply.
“Well, she is able to perceive things beyond the sight of mortals, but she doesn’t seem to be able to consciously identify information and the records like you do. It’s almost as if… No matter. Anyway, they treated this child-“ Sekhenun pointed to herself. “-as the Messenger, correct?”
“Yeah. The Messenger of the Goddess. Have you thought of something?”
“Well, I created this child a long, long time ago. From the records that Rei gave me, it appears that the dimensional technology the cult used was also a bastardization of my own work, and they had the idea to use the flowers to enhance the connection between dimensions.”
“You might have been the Goddess that they sought to bring back, huh?”
She shrugs. “Perhaps. I see no evidence that they ever really understood what they were doing besides stumbling around in the dark.”
“We agree on that point,” I sigh. “Now, getting back to Kyrie…”
“Right. Your status as a terminal accords you the ability to see more than most. You had a strong desire to see her, and this made you more sensitive to her information. To be precise, your observation solidified her form, much in the same way that the Observer does on a multiversal scale. It allowed her to speak to you, and even punch you, if she wanted to. Of course, her information was scattered, in a sense – she had to gather it to a sufficient extent that you could begin to perceive it. She was only able to do so because she wanted to see you again, or so I suspect. She never did tell me why.”
Sekhenun pauses for a while, a wicked smile appearing on her lips.
“In other words, I suppose you could call it the power of true love. The love you had for each other allowed you to stay connected even when she was disembodied.”
“This is payback for that honeymoon comment, isn’t it?” I say with a straight face. She frowns, slightly disappointed. “I was sure you would be more flustered than this. This is no fun.”
“Well…” Upon hearing her explanation, a strange feeling of comfort had come over me – I felt like a huge weight had been lifted from my heart. I’m too relaxed to feel embarrassed, if that makes any sense. “I’ll leave the blushing and stuttering for another time. Where is she now, by the way?”
“The backlash from the procedure temporarily cut off the higher dimension from this plane. I am in the process of making enough flowers to help me re-establish the connection with Ean.”
“Oh, I was meaning to ask about him… we were supposed to get the First Emperor, weren’t we? What happened?”
“Ah, yes.” She grimaces. “Severe miscalculation on all our parts, to be honest, though Rei bears most of the blame for allowing Selkhet in. You see, she would have created his body – by creating a form that matches the mind, it would have drawn his consciousness in. Part of Kyrie’s difficulty in reaching you was because there was another entity that matched her form – it drew away some of her information. Now, during the procedure, this child wanders in – she is not just any child, but for all intents and purposes a genetic clone of myself as I was when I created her. She resembled me far, far more than the work-in-progress that was being moulded by Rei and Ean. Since our minds were still quite entangled at the moment, the laws we were working with couldn’t differentiate between me and him. The energy Rei was putting out decided to take the quickest way to form itself – and that meant pouring into Selkhet and dragging me along with it. That’s the briefest explanation that I can give you.”
“What’s happened to Selkhet, then? Is she gone?”
“No. I merged with her. Her memories are mine. By the way, thank you for treating her kindly. It’s rare to see a human act without prejudice.” Her smile is dazzling, and for once, genuine.
“Oh, you’re welcome.” I begin to get up from the bench. “Well, I suppose that’s it for now-“
“Wait.” She raises a hand, having something more to say. “How much do you know about the Devouring Emperor?”
“Not much. Do you mean you can tell me something about him?”
“I said we were on a journey through the stars, imbecile. Of course we came across his presence.”
“Sorry.” I apologize reflexively. She has a rather commanding presence despite her child-like stature.
“If I am not wrong, he used to be one of my kind. From what Ean told me, he seems to have attempted to devour a Master. We are not sure what happened immediately after, but the result is this thing that has eaten planets whole. I would not call him Gieloth, or immortal, or Master. He is something entirely other now.”
“That sounds quite scary, to be honest.”
“We came across mention of a Great Devourer. It has been used to refer to the Devouring Emperor, but the term appears to have been used before his appearance, and in the scattered fragments of Gieloth oral history that predate our contact with the Masters they talk about a monstrous, star-eating beast with a similar nature. Do not take this foe lightly. We have seen him envelop a jungle moon in darkness, leaving behind only fragments of rock. ”
“Thank you for the warning,” I nod. “We’ll be careful.”
“Do you really understand?” she asks, her piercing eyes aimed at me. “True, you may not face death because of your link to the Observer, but you are only human. Push yourself too hard, call upon too much of powers that are beyond your mortal frame, and you risk destroying your mind and body. There are fates worse than death. We may beat this Emperor, but be mindful of the personal price you are willing to pay to do it. You are more important than you think yourself to be. Someone would disagree – that man is all about self-sacrifice even if uncalled for – but you must start thinking about greater concerns than just your planet alone.”
“I’ll… think about this.” I say.
“Make sure you do,” she says, and kicks me out of her laboratory.
