Semi Metaphysical Callings

[Autumnleaves]

In the Shade of Starless Skies

I caught my breath, opened my eyes, sat up. I was in my apartment. But there was something wrong. I had been doing something, something important. I could not remember, and this frightened me.

It was dark. That wasn't right. It wasn't supposed to be dark. No light shone through the only small window. I reached for the light switch. It was already on. I looked up at the lights. They were gone. The ceiling was gone. I could see the dim, grey edges of my apartment's walls, hazy and uneven. Above that was nothing. I stood under a barren sky. There were no stars, no moons, no light from above. Nothing. I dropped my hand from the switch and shivered.

It was silent. I strained to hear the sounds of West Athens, people flying by in their Yalmahas, the ever present static of the market channels, the muted chatter and clatter of all sleepless cities. But there were none. I heard only my breathing, my heartbeat, my blood rushing in my ears, that high and ever-present hum that comes only in quiet places.

I gasped and spun around. Was that a rustle in the corner? Was there movement in those shadows? I could not see, but I heard it again. A slithering, like serpent uncoiling itself, preparing to strike.

As it edged towards me, I made out a shape. It was a woman, not facing me, but kneeling face down. As she stood, she cast off her robe, revealing mottled skin. No, not mottled I saw as she slid closer. Her skin was covered with drawings, tattoos. Predators never seen by sober eyes pursued each other across her flesh. Geometric glyphs folded themselves over and around her like a plea from the absent stars. It was too dim to see the devouring beasts and martial constellations clearly. I thanked the darkness.

I trembled as she approached, for she was as beautiful and alarming as a charging tiger. She took one last gliding step and stopped an arm's reach from me. She did not glance up, not even once, yet I could feel all her attention focused on me.

"Who are you?" I asked, my choked whisper as loud and unwelcome as gunfire.

Autumn crux.

The voice, if it was a voice, was like nothing I ever heard.

Your death was my birth, your final death, my escape. Your soul will be mine. Your stars, mine. Your future. Mine. Your body, your dreams, your freedom. Mine. Mine. Mine.

The woman stood patiently, waiting. Her hands were clasped gently in front of her in a mockery of prayer, eyes cast down. A humble stance, but full of restless energy and pride. A mocking Buddha. "Where am I?"

The stars fell from indifference. Deprived of worship, the constellations wandered and became lost. Now shadows dwell here. Dark angels of lost laughter, stolen moments. Archives of bygone eras. Shut them up. Full of poisonous knowledge.

A tremor went through the woman's body. Battles between malformed creations and misinformed scriptures raged over her skin. Again, I thanked the darkness.

Here is the first action and the last act. One final, glorious bloodbath before the curtain closes. Lands of tarnished scepters and clockwork demons. Of unnamed children and broken machines. Of swords, of sighs, and the generations between.

The first letter follows the ebb of the moons and the eye of the storm. But a dragon rides the waves. The heavens have no peaceful fields. For there are wars between souls. And treacheries.

Nothing left now but tradition. So.

You may ask three questions before we begin the fight for the prize. One left.

This was a dream. Or madness. But I felt somehow that I had to take her words seriously. I thought a moment and asked, "How will you fight me?"

I will blind your hands with solid sounds.
I will deafen your feet with living rags.
I will strand your heart with thorned waters.
I will. I will. I will.

The way she was talking, this place, it wasn't--couldn't be real. The woman smiled and licked her lips.

Oh! I would feast on your delightful uncertainties for hours. You know the evils of birth, and the evils of science, but not the evils of spirits. But knowledge you shall have in time. All shall come to us in time, to you most of all. Have you never realized how special you are, how fated, how blessed? Your birth marked you as one of us. Every one of your choices has bound you to the shadows.

No! I tried to shake my head. I tried to shout a denial. But I was trapped, as in a paralyzing dream.

As a rebel, you birthed rebellious daughters. Denied life in the worlds you know by your technologies, your chemicals, your implants, they left you for worlds unknown. They fled, strayed, lost their virtue, became pregnant with vengeance. So the prodigal daughter returns. Look upon my face, mother.

I looked into a mirror. I was in her face, in her eyes. And I knew that of all the monsters of history, my sins would be the most terrible.

[Autumnleaves]

Interlude

I was falling, screaming.

Then I was standing, solid ground beneath me. The change was so sudden I convulsed and fell. My muscles shook, responding to my fear without any direction. There was light and noise all around me. I kept screaming. Not a scream of surprise or fear, but a high, sobbing wail.

I couldn't scream forever. I lay on the ground, retching, choking, trying to breathe. I was shaking and sweaty. I could make out some of the noise, somehow the voices were both deafening and muffled.

"What the--"
"--seen alot of this lately."
"Is there a doctor--"
"Hey there."
"--wrong with reclamation?"
"Maybe Omni's been tampering--"
"--seen a few cases."
"Are you alright?"
"Been real cautious myself these last--"
"--do something?"
"You're safe. You're at reclaim."

Hands grabbed me, rolled me onto my back, straightened my disobedient limbs. I tried to say no. I tried to make them stop, to leave me alone, but I couldn't.

"It's all right. I'm a Doctor." The light was still too bright, but I made out a face. Neither an ordinary or handsome face, but surrounded by such brilliance that I felt it must be an angel. I tried to smile. It couldn't have looked very nice. I was clenching my teeth.

"She's all right," he said, louder. "I'll stay here until she's recovered. Show's over."

The doctor sent a stream of nanos into me. "Just something to relax you," he said. "You'll feel alright in a moment."

I tried to shake my head. I tried to explain that I'd never be alright. I tried to tell him to leave, that I couldn't bear his gaze. I managed a weak groan. He told me not to talk.

"Go home," he said again to a few stragglers. I could make them out now. Colored, weaving blobs in a sea of light. "Go home, or I'll charge you for admission."

He stayed with me for a minute, an hour, I didn't know. I sat up as soon as I could. I told him, stuttering, to leave me alone. He tried to take my hand, but I pushed him away. I told him again to leave me. He nodded kindly, sent another infusion of nanos into me, and left.

I stared after him as he walked away, hating him for doing what I asked. I crawled to the shade of the nearest building, out of the way, and squeezed my knees to my chest.

What had happened? Why was I reclaimed? I checked my HUD. A mission to the Broken Shores. Oh. Oh. Was that all?

Eventually I could stand. Still a bit shaky, I walked carefully towards my apartment. I didn't really want to be alone. I wanted the presence of people, the pressure and the noise and the bustle. I wanted the comfort of people, more than I ever had. I wanted to laugh, to dance, to seek forgetfulness in revelry, but how could I face them? No, I had to go home, break the only mirror. Then maybe I could get my bearings, check the grid, figure out what happened.

I didn't notice the commotion at first. I was on automatic pilot, lost to circular arguments. Eventually a voice crashed through, "Get down, fool!"

I didn't drop. No one ever does. I looked around. There was a crowd on one side of me, pointing and waving in slow motion. Some people were running away from me. Behind me was a warehouse. It started to glow.

[Autumnleaves]

The Eighth Keeper of the Road to the Western Lands

It was gentle this time. The glow spread until it covered my vision. I was lying on my back, looking up at another sky. This one, too, had no stars. Neither suns nor moons, but it was bright. It was not unbroken, however. Dark shapes soared in its depths. Or heights, I supposed. Whether floating worlds or giant birds, I could not tell. I squinted and sat up.

I was on a dirt path between two fields of grain, ripe and golden. Ahead of me on the path were a pair of boots and a stick shoved into the ground between them. They were white and porous, like chalk, gone a tinge yellow with age. I looked up. It was a statue of a man resting his hands on a long sword, its point thrust into the ground between his feet. It was thin, but had the appearance of great strength. Still, but it gave the impression it could leap into action at any moment. How long had it been here? No, how long had he been here. I knew, somehow, it was a man. Alive. Or something that passed for it. He was dressed in unadorned and ancient armor. This, I knew, was not marble or metaplast, but something older.

Was this another three-questions game? What horrors would this one reveal? I didn't ask for this. I couldn't go through it again. I tried to focus, to think of three questions that would answer this... this... mess. But my thoughts were like water, I could run my hands through them, but could not grasp them for long.

Here is no time, which is all the time you need.

His voice was the crack and roll of thunder. My ears ached after each word, yet I yearned to hear more, to listen until I was deaf and stunned.

I could waste all the time I wanted waiting for the right question. But no, I couldn't face this place, this person forever. And I wanted so much to hear that voice again. I grasped at the last one that floated by. "How will my... daughter defeat me?"

The adversary's moves are limited by tradition.

She may play to your strengths. She can show you your talents and their absence in others, while hiding their own talents from you. She will convince you of your uniqueness, your superior gifts. Here are the lies of flatterers, so difficult to deny when they are the truth, merely incomplete.

She may play to your weaknesses. But the weaknesses men dwell on are not those that turn you to the shadows. The love-starved priest whose eyes see no joy in your world is bound to the shadows as much as the love-starved seducer who understands nothing beyond his own pleasure. Here are sins, not of action, but of fear. Here are sins, not of passion, but its absence.

She may play to your doubts. The adversary's last strategy is to convince you that she does not exist. That no others exist. True evil can only occur when men harm one another without hearing truths and warnings, without seeing the accusations in their foes eyes, without fear of punishment. Here is ego driven to madness.

I thought of my life so far. I saw only failures. "I'm sorry! I didn't know! I didn't mean to!"

The struggle is not over. Here are demons and despair. And here are bright eyes and laughter. Here be dragons. Both those you have slain, and those you have yet to slay. These murders shall not draw you to the shadows. All harm is evil. But there is what is right. And there is what is necessary.

"Why are you here? I mean, the road is empty. No one comes here. Why guard it?"

Who asks, 'why guard it?' All who know of it attempt to travel this road, for at its end lies the prize of prizes. All our children come here in time, and all your children as well.

"I'm not a child!" No, I thought. I'm just frightened like one.

To us, the oldest man is a child. Your deaths, frivolous, shocking, and final, are our births.

Consider yourself lucky, for you did not suffer final death to arrive here. You will have choice, memory, a body. Three things all my prior foes left behind. For us there is only purpose, duty. Your memories are a powerful weapon, washing into me like the tides. I feel myself overcome. After all this time, a living body is awesome to behold.

Yet the tests must be still be given. Could the veins of your Whompas carry nutrients throughout the world as our veins of notum? Could your Grid carry instructions and insight as does Ergo? Youth must defeat age, but not without a struggle. How else can we be sure our children have grown up?

Someday you shall free us of our burdens and bring a golden age or the end of ages. Only then shall the prize be given or denied to all. And the road to the west shall need no keepers.

"But why you? Why my... daughter?"

Contact here is easier for those who are known to one another. For there are bonds between souls. And loyalties. Your adversary is one of your shadows, born of life, not death. A dream, a gasp, a stolen moment. Perhaps she is a night spent with a boy long forgotten. Perhaps she is a lucky blow from a sandworm. Or perhaps she is one of your victims.

"Victims? But... I never killed anyone! Not until I got to Rubi-Ka, and then I just... sent them back. They were reclaimed! They didn't really die! Please tell me they didn't die..."

What of the musician you murdered for promised wealth? What of the writer you starved with indolence? What of the philosopher you killed because your hated your teachers?

"What?" I shook my head, trying to remember. "I don't know who you're talking about..."

You have asked three questions.

"Oh no! I didn't realize... wait!"

And now I shall tell you three truths.

Not all souls are created by union.
We are born also from symbols. We hide in your alphabets. We lurk in your equations. We are made in your images: your arts, your loves, your banners.

Not every union creates a soul.
Most passions are barren. Clouds without water, carried about by winds. Autumn trees whose fruit withers, twice dead.

Not every soul is born into worlds you know.
Mankind knows only one world, and only what lies around certain stars in that world. There are the parts of your world that you know. Past that point your knowledge ends.

And yet you interfere with three worlds. Your ignorance harms us, but we forgive. Can anyone hate their mothers, their children? You are our larvae, unmetamophosed. You are our hopes, our dreams, our future. You frighten us, shun us, but still we treasure. We are born of each other, symbionts.

We shall meet soon, face to face. The barriers shall fall again. The old machines shall whine and groan once more, admitting our newest children. We shall both be tested, and my fears are great.

He moved for the first time. His hand, twitched once, twice, then slowly rose from the hilt of his sword. White dust fell from his arm as he reached to his head. He took off his helmet. It was a face I knew. Had memorized a thousand times. Somehow, through all the schools, streets, and ships, I kept one thing hidden and safe. A small holoprojector of my parents. The face was my father's.

"Father?"

[Autumnleaves]

Going On

"No, I am just a teacher."

The face blurred. I blinked away tears. I was looking up at my Sensei. "What happened?"

"A warehouse caught fire. They were experimenting with notum. I heard the blast and found you." He looked me over and grunted. "You'll be fine."

I sat up. "I feel... fine," I said. Sensei looked at me, through me. He always looked at me that way, but before I thought I had nothing to hide. He knows! I thought. How can I face him if he knows?

I looked down and tried to find a way to say it now, get it over with. Before... anything else happened. "I'm sorry, Sensei. I can't... finish my lessons. I really am a terrible student. I don't want to... waste any more of your time."

"You are a terrible student," he said, gruffly. "But not as bad as me." I looked up. His face was as serious as ever, but there was a sparkle in his eyes. I saw a young man, eager and selfish, getting into a dozen kinds of trouble. He stood up and lent me a hand. He wasn't quite as intimidating now. I tried to smile at him, but it came out unfinished, uncertain. I wiped a tear away.

"How did you... make up for it all?" I asked. "How can I go back?"

"You can't go back. You will go on."

"I'm sorry I never asked, Sensei. But what is your name?"

"I was called many names until I found the fourth wind," he paused, scratching his chin. "The name I had last and longest was Waiting Mantis."

I nodded. We stood side by side, careful not to look at one another. "Come see me when you're ready, Autumn Leaves," he said, putting a hand on my shoulder. Then he was gone.

I thought about following Sensei to his home. Maybe he could untangle me. For some reason I went to the store instead. Was Athens always this bright? Had that flock of reets always been so beautiful? That distant storm so majestic?

In the store, I traded the last of my T70 Beyers--cheaper than what I could get for it on the market channel, but I already had plenty of money. I browsed the other terminals. I didn't find what I wanted, but it was close enough. A mitar, used and dirty, but it worked. I tested its strings softly. Not one of the instruments I used to know, but it would do.

I watched the pedestrians and idlers as I walked home, an old mitar held under one arm. I had seen them all before, but never watched. What of that man running down the street? What of those women talking? What dreams came to them? What choices did they make? How well did they carry their burdens?

For the first time, I wondered. But their faces were foreign skies to me, empty and unknowable.

[Autumnleaves]

(( Afterwords...
Okay. I admit it. I'm not an M.P.
This story didn't stick to my plan, so it's no longer relevant to Black Sunday.
But once upon a time, I tried to play an M.P.
Believe me. You have my moral support.
It's yours for whatever you can get for it in this soft market. ))

[Trilic]

Very very very nice autumn!

You are a very excellent writer....do you have any other works?

and thank you for your support with our prof.

[Autumnleaves]

Originally posted by Trilic
You are a very excellent writer....do you have any other works?

(( Oh, sure. I have stuff all over the internet. And, if you're a (C)RPG fan, you've probably read some of my stuff before.

But really, I'm just posting this to send this story to the top of the forum again at my ego's earnest request. ))