After so many decades of eating nothing but cold, moldy bread and decaying meat, the fresh arterial warmness felt almost blissful.
He stood back up, his form stiffening, his mouth dripping saliva and blood. The crowd had remained stoic for a while, until they realized a new champion had been born. No one cared for his methods; all they cared about was the untold hours of entertainment he would bring to their blood–mad senses and the miasma of death his methods promised to bring. The narrator spoke with newfound madness, his voice bringing back to life a name, one which Max felt oddly resentful towards.
“Behold! The Proxy!”
***
Years passed by, with his almost daily victories in the arena and the feast they provided bloating his body until he seemed better fed than most of the attendants. With the coming of middle age, his horn had grown to monstrous proportions and served to implant fear in those who had flocked to whiteness his martial prowess in the ring.
But while he butchered his victims day after haunted day, his resentment over the crowd grew. It festered until all he could feel was the burning hate for the people who would make sport of his insanity.
No one appreciated the fine thrusts with which he disemboweled his opponents. No one marveled at the precision his hands would display in eviscerating his victims. All they cared about was blood spurring and viscera flowing. But Max had began to hear things, troubling things which seemed to have stepped out if his dreams and into the waking world. There were two of them, two voices, each sounding more desperate than the other. He didn’t know where they came from, but somehow knew he needed to find out.
With each passing day, he grew tired of the human filth they sent at him. Weak creatures of men who begged to be shown mercy, not realizing they would die anyway unless he killed them. In this sense each of his strokes became a stroke of mercy, his cleaver splitting their heads as though they were nothing more than overripe fruit.
Over the years, the prison guards had grown reckless. Believing themselves safe, they often lead Max to the arena unshackled. Still, he let opportunities of escape pass him and instead thought about a more theatrical means of break–out, one that would never be remembered for reasons that we kill them all.
He downed his next opponent with one, precise swing, his eyes already surveying the arena even as the body fell, his mind calculating where best to start his rampage. The answer quickly became obvious. Max threw his cleaver at the announcer, the administrator of the games. The blade whirled through the air and with a hard thud embedded itself into the narrator’s forehead. The man fell back, swept of his feet by the blow as Max jumped up and with both hands grabbed the edge of the arena. His muscles, honed over the years of visceral combat, tensed. He pulled his fat body upward and stooped over the edge of the arena. The petrified attendants responded almost instantly. They began to beat him with anything close at hand, and if nothing was close, they used their fists. Those kinds of things could not stop him, however, not now, not tomorrow, not ever again. He was like a bear who had overgrown its cage and finally found a means of escape, all thanks to its captor’s belief that it had became tamed. With a swing of his massive hands he threw aside the men who had flung themselves at him to pin him down. He raced to the dead administrator and placed a foot on the man’s head, dislodging the cleaver. The dead skull crunched and spit blood, the dead body twitching. No sooner had the sharpened blade been freed, than Max had already cut down several heads in a feral backswing of his hand. People began to scream and make for the exit as they realized battling this animal would be a task more futile than trying to fight gravity. He began to stomp forward, when a stench spread over the air. The shadows grew thick and seemed to ooze out of the walls and ceiling like corporal hands grasping for the light. A distant sound erupted in the middle of the arena as whips of incandescent light slashed out from an expanding black circle. A two dimensional void visible only from the back and front opened and called out to him. He could hear his name, not the name these fools had branded him with, but his true father–given name. It came as a chant from within the portal, urging him to come. At first confused, he resisted, but he could scarcely ignore the unprecedented phenomena of odd familiarly. He slew a few more of the fleeing men, cutting limbs and decapitating heads. He stopped and saw a hand reaching out to him from the gateway in the middle of the arena. It looked so clean, so fresh, like the hand of a woman, or a poet.
Max noticed everyone had disappeared or had been murdered, their dank bodies laying silent and askew across the platforms of the amphitheater, their eyes frozen in expressions of fear. And as he looked into their eyes, all of them wide and following his every move, he realized he was dreaming. He knew faces did not freeze in terror upon death, but went slack as all muscle–control escapes the dead mind. Blood dripped from torn limbs and motionless bodies and permeated to the bottom floor, gathering in a thick pool.
Drifting between lucidity and clarity, Max marveled at the destruction his old bones were still capable of bestowing upon this world. He hated himself for it, hated that he seemed to enjoy, even relish what he had done.
“Maaaxx,” cried a distant voice, a shred of pleasantry inside the bleak madness. Slowly, he stepped down level by level until he reached the ground floor of the arena. The sand – turned scarlet with the years of bloodshed – stuck to his feet, making him realize he had never before felt, truly felt the calming touch of the sand beneath his feet. His hand extended towards the portal as he walked to its edge. Within it, he could see an outline of a place drifting above a planet. He recognized it, and almost cried with the realization of what has happened. He leapt into the abyss.
CHAPTER 8
Reality Is An Illusion
The awakening was brutal. Max felt every part of his body resist it and every synapse of his mind deny it. The result was a tremor of pain which bled out of his pores and spread into the surrounding reality of the pod, where it seemed to ricochet of walls in visible waves of jagged, tormented air. His mind drew faces out of the nonsensical shapes, faces that weren’t there, faces that slid back into him after they had done screaming and grimacing.
The pod opened. Bolt’s face greeted him with a look of concern and Zack soon joined. He could see their questions seep out of their skulls and mottle the air like ink.
He climbed out of the pod, collapsing on one knee. Aiding Max to his feet, Zack asked, “Are you ok? What happened in there?” He didn’t remember getting out of the pod.
His mouth felt dry and his lips were cracked, he tried to lick them, but there was no moisture on his tongue. He braced himself over the pod as Zack handed him a glass of water. For the next few moments, the cleansing of thirst felt like the single most important thing he had ever done. He drank so fast he had to stop midway and take a few breaths before he could finish the glass.
“You okay, man?” Zack asked again. Max took a moment, resting with his back against the pod and regarding the man with the kind of look one might give to an arch enemy right before he strangles him.
“The hell was that? Huh? The fuck!” Max snapped. He tried to get up, but instead collapsed to his knees again. This time, no one helped him up. Like animals, the two had sensed when to keep their distance. “I killed so many of them. So many, so long… I ate them,” he said in between breaths. “I ate them! Why didn’t you disconnect me? How long was I in there! Tell me!”
“Twenty minutes,” Zack said, his tone defensive yet sympathetic. “I tried to get you both out when I got a message from Central,” Zack continued, “but you stayed in the dream. I don’t…I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s like your mind fused with the machine, I had to program a doorway myself so you could exit.”
“Weird shit,” Bolt nodded and knelt beside Max. “You’ll feel better,” he put a hand on his shoulder, “a bad dream is all.”
Max shot him a look like Bolt had just said the stupidest thing ever. “A bad dream? You don’t get it, I felt years pass by, years wh
ere I killed people every day and ate their…I tasted them…”
“We do understand,” Zack said. “It’s what the machine does, but there aint much we can do about it now, is there?”
“You son of a…” Max lunged towards Zack’s neck like a leopard, his rage infused by a remnant of the dream, moving to try and grasp the technician.
“Whoa, whoa,” Bolt said, managing to stop him before he could do any harm. “It’s not his fault, settle down.”
“The hell it isn’t! He should have been able to prevent shit like this, he said he could!”
“I tried!” Zack admitted, “what do you think I was doing, scratching my arse? It’s not my fault you’re so fucked up!”
And there it was. The crux of it. The truth denied to him for years, lingering on the tethers of anyone who knew him. His own rage subsided when he realized the reality of it. The sudden comprehension blinded him. Suffocated him. The redness around him stilled and the ethereal mist subsided. But at that point he no longer cared about the regret he saw in Zack’s eyes. He cared little about the man’s remorse over the word spoken. For what had just come out of the Zack’s mouth was the truth. After all the pretense, someone had finally told him the God damn honest truth. And, as usual, it burned like hell.
***
They spoke like friends tend to speak after there had been a fight among them, which is to say very little. Instead, and in reply to the message Zack had received, they headed to the central spire. Bolt felt like he needed to break the ice somehow, but as time stretched between each footstep, he felt the window of opportunity to speak slip further and further.
The throng of people milling about them only made everything worse, their collective voices and sounds making it nearly impossible to focus on what had just happened. Soon, it would become too awkward to even mention the event in Zack’s apartment; it would feel like talking about a death in the family.
“I hear it’s coming,” Bolt heard a woman behind him say. The man next to her grunted as if it had been about time, and said, “Bleh, finally we get to leave this damn station. Seems like it’s been too long since I heard those words, know what I’m sayin’?”
“You could leave whenever you want,” the woman said. “And which words are you talking about?”
“We shall travel to this planet? What else. Honestly, I can’t wait, you know?”
Neither could Bolt. He knew the words too, they had become legendary. We shall travel to this planet. They represented every strand of human progress and achievement, but most of all, they represented the arrival of a God, one with the promise of propelling them to the very edges of the galaxy. Perhaps even space itself.
“Anything to leave this fucking place,” the man added.
“Yeh,” the woman agreed, “need a break for sure.”
Bolt still couldn’t see what was so bad about the station. For one, it looked phenomenal, like a city humankind had found in the depths of an ocean and placed into the sky just because they could. He felt happier here, but that wasn’t the right term, a more accurate one would be – at peace. He didn’t need to worry about not recognizing someone or failing to greet them – he knew he didn’t know anyone, and that feeling was strangely freeing. More so than he even expected it to be. The only thing he began to miss was a breeze. Any kind of wind or a wisp to mix the smell of ozone and bleach or blow it away. It would have been nice.
He noticed they began to ascend on a slight upward angle and looked up. A monolith. A tower. A mega–structure. He couldn’t see a single window on its flawless, white surface. It stretched out from the slum–like and flawlessly white structures at its feet, reforming itself from an initial tube–like structure into a square. It carried the feel of trapped power like an ancient object found in the deep desert, brimming with mystery. Bolt couldn’t tell how tall it was, but it seemed to be at least a few dozen stories, height was a thing difficult to determine on the station. It felt like looking at a mountain, immovable and impenetrable.
As they walked to it, the number of people around them steadily increased. They dripped in from every alley and passageway, adding to the group and expanding it into a mob. It had already become impossible to tell whether the three men were at the center or the edge of it. Soon Bolt couldn’t see where the crowd began, its edges lost in between the buildings ahead and further up the slope.
There was no main road leading to the tower, rather, they followed a collection of narrow passages, each eventually forking together and leading to a single entrance of the spire.
The three men passed below the wide doorway, and Bolt saw Max place a hand on Zack’s shoulder. “Apologies, friend,” Max said.
“Eh,” Zack shrugged with an understanding smile on his lips, “no need to say anything. That shouldn’t have happened, I’m sorry it did. I’ll make it up to you somehow.”
“If you insist,” Max grinned.
“I do.”
***
“Have you actually seen it?” Bolt asked one of the technician seated behind a wide photonic console, its screen displaying star–filled space.
“No,” the man answered.
The three of them had been allowed on the main observation deck once the people in charge had seen the Proxy. It made Bolt realize he had never asked Max how he came to acquire the title. It felt absurd when he thought about it, his best friend a powerful figure? I should ask for stuff. Zack didn’t mention anything either, it was almost as if none of them realized it, until eventually something happened which only the Proxy should be able to do. Bolt sensed they had talked about it at some point, but couldn’t remember the conversation. He wondered what Max had already told him. Bolt couldn’t help but get the uncanny sense that the eyes of Max weren’t just his own.
“I don’t think anyone had seen it yet,” the burly technician added. “Perhaps the Proxy can tell more you more, did he not tell you anything?”
Before Bolt could produce a reply, a light began to chime on the lower right corner of the tech’s console. Men and women, technicians and honorary guests began to whisper and talk amongst themselves. Only the scientists inside the circular depression filled with mind–to–machine consoles and screens stayed quiet, each examining their own data displays. A tall man with clearly visible eye cybernetics, his irises unnaturally bright and with a clean shaven head, stood up from the central console on a circular stage rising from the middle of the depression where the scientists worked. His voice brought some semblance of order, and Bolt could tell he was used to people listening when he employed his enhanced vocal abilities.
“Quiet,” he said. “Adia,” he told one of the scientists below him, “enable the wall–screen.” The man could have done it himself, but the task was so rudimentary and simplistic Bolt thought he probably felt it beneath him.
Following the commander’s order, the view outside the glass–wall changed as the wall took on a life of its own. The sight of the station curling upward outside the glass–wall shifted into a vision of a small region of space. Lights flickered within the darkness and it took a moment for Bolt to recognize the celestial stream of the Milky Way. Something looked out of place on the image. A moon?
“Move away from the damn wall,” the commander grumbled. And as though his voice had just spat fire, the people who had bunched up on the stage surrounding the consoles dispersed.
“Prepare our defenses, ready our weapons,”
“Sir?” Adia asked.
“I’m not taking any chances, if that’s something else, I intend to be ready for it.”
“Sir I,” the woman stuttered. “With that thing’s scale, I don’t think there’s anything we can do to stop it even if we tried.”
“Who says trying isn’t enough?” the commander replied.
“Send a transmission,” Max said, his voice carrying a palpable weight behind it. No one could resist. Everyone sent out a hail simultaneously. Those who couldn’t send one began to think of a way how they might. Bolt ha
d to blink the thought away as he leaned over to his friend.
“Is it ours?” It seemed like something Max should know.
“I think if it wasn’t you’d already be incapable of asking.”
CHAPTER 9
Time Is An Illusion
How long has it been? A year? A decade? A millennium? How long since I had seen my home planet? These felt like questions a person should know the answer to, important questions. But something else seemed to trump them all; did it really matter? The answer bent into the realm of ‘No’.
She reflected on why this was. How long had I been stationary? This too seemed like a question she should have been able to answer. But it was as though an integral part of her was missing. A part she had been born with, a part which informed her of the passage of time. An internal clock. Memories of the past had molded with memories of the future in a way she couldn’t unravel, and recollections of a time when she still used to forget more than she thought were gone. Now, forgetting had become impossible. Her perceptions and, as a result, her preconceptions of space had transformed the day she became one with the space–roaming machine. It had been the day time became something to move and sail through, and not a thing to experience or a presence felt in the marrow, ageing her. Still, no matter how much she tried to rationalize it now that she floated above her home planet again, she couldn’t deny her desire to know and feel how long it had actually been since she had last seen it. Instead, the only thing she felt was cold. Constant, unyielding cold.
She never shivered. The cold was all around her, as much within as it was without, pressing in on her carbon form from every direction and angle. She sensed the weight of it too, but somehow, strangely, felt weightless and untethered at the same time, even while knowing she weighted thousands upon thousands of tons. But those too, like the measuring of time, were now just numbers. Abstract properties and figures attributed to concepts which meant nothing to her.