to goad me into doing this, Kurt. I want to. It’s just too fucking much, you know? I’m scared, that’s all.”
Much to his chagrin, Schneider smiled, but Bob did not avert his gaze or indicate he felt uncomfortable. There were probably worse things than Schneider’s smile where he was going.
“Just think about Lisa. We need you calm, not edgy. Do you have your music with you?” said Schneider
Bob made a half-hearted attempt at smiling before replying:
“I got Chopin, Liszt, Brahms, Vivaldi, Handel, Guns and Roses, W.A.S.P., I got -”
Schneider furrowed his brow and his attention was caught like a fish on a harpoon:
“Estranged and The Idol?” Schneider asked impatiently?
“Yes, yes! Jesus!”
“Good, good. Those two fit your deltas to a fault. Now let’s run it down once more: Once we get past the Roetman-Schneider limit, you should -”
“You really love the sound of your name on everything, don’t you?” interrupted Bob, pointing with his heavily gloved - almost armoured - hand at Schneider’s T-shirt.
“I do. Now, once past that, you should -”
“Kurt, you’ve been designing this for twenty years. I’ve been eating, breathing, and shitting Intrinsic Enthalpy for the past five years. I’ve been wearing this god-awful Suit for two-and-a-half years. I got everything memorised. I’m sick of it. I want it to work, so please: flick that fucking switch of yours and leave the rest to me. Can you do that? Relinquish control for just a moment?”
Kurt shied away, took a few steps backwards. He simply nodded, without a smile or a quirky comment. He stepped down from the dais on which the Chair had been literally carved upon and ran his fingers over a small, insignificant-looking panel. Without bells and whistles, a five-minute counter had lit up on a large display hanging from the ceiling. People around the Labyrinth were slightly caught off-guard, but they quickly assumed their predefined posts in front of screens and key equipment. They heard Schneider’s voice rise above the pervasive electrical humming:
“Making history in five minutes, people. Hope someone’s brought something expensive to drink.”
Nobody answered. As Schneider made his way down the controller’s pit, he gazed at the tense faces, the rigid bodies. He looked up towards the observation window and saw nothing but blant eyes ceremoniously fixed on that counter display, approaching zero with a lack of effort that did this whole venture little justice.
Bob simply sat there, mumbling even louder than before, watching the minutes on the display flash by in red LEDs, like a hare frozen by headlights. He could hear himself now, and he bet Kurt could hear him too, smiling uncannily; ’I believe in one God, the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible..’
Slowly but ruthlessly the whirring noise of motors and circulation valves began to echo in the Labyrinth. The lighting became subdued, an array of spot lights illuminating the Chair alone, Bob squinting at the harsh white light before his eyes adjusted. A flurry of activity could be seen and heard: monitoring equipment had been switched on, capacitor banks were filled and ready to discharge unheard of amounts of power.
Bob had his senses focused entirely on the now, his lips moving as if of their own volition. His voice sounded like it belonged to someone else: ’..begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father; through him all things were made..’ The only thing rising above every other sound was Schneider’s crisp voice over the PA system:
“Field alignment complete. Two minutes to Convergence. All monitors, sound off.”
One by one, the various heads of stations answered, some voices more readily than others, but none without the unmistakable hint of anxiety. No-one seemed certain, no-one believed as much as Schneider, who spoke once more with improbable ease:
“All systems check, we’ve got green all over the board. It’s like St. Patrick’s day, right Bob?”
Bob did not answer, so intently focused inwards, disconnecting from the surrounding reality. His mouth kept wording the Creed: ’..in accordance with the Scriptures. He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead..’
Schneider smiled, even if it was only to himself. He then announced with a measure of formality:
“Permission to commit final actions, General.”
A few still moments of awkward noise empty of human voice ensued. Then a gruff, stentorian voice answered tersely, making the hair on the backs of everyone in the Labyrinth rise involuntarily.
“Commence ’Sheol’. ’Sheol’ is go.”
“Thank you, General. Point of no return in forty-seven seconds and counting. Fields are aligned and cogent. Just waiting, really.”
Some nervous, hesitant smiles could be seen on the faces in front of the monitors. But Bob wasn’t smiling, he was praying, with more fervor than ever before: ’..who with the Father and the Son is adored and glorified, who has spoken through the prophets..’.
Schneider’s face had become a mask frozen in a mix of anticipation and glee. Even his eyes seemed out of focus, fixed on a distant point through and beyond the Chair. The finality of what was about to transpire echoed with overwhelming certainty in the crackling air of the Labyrinth. Schneider saw the psychosomatic properties of Bob flash white in the panel in front of him, everything in tune; Bob was reaching the required mind-state. Schneider’s voice even though amplified by the PA could not be heard clearly above the full-blown sound of activity:
“Final emergence imminent. Enthalpy transubstantiation will be achieved in twenty seconds and counting. Are we recording all this?”
A slighlty cumbersome ’thumbs up’ was given from the head of the Data monitor, but Schneider did not bother to respond in kind. Everyone’s attention was focused on the Chair, even as Bob peered upwards, towards the blinding lamps that bathed him with a light as immaculate as fresh snow. Schneider started counting:
“Ten..nine..eight..”
Bob’s voice insisted in Kurt’s headset, a tiny little voice that quietly kept going:
“..I confess one baptism for the forgiveness of sins..”
“..seven..six..five..”
“..and I look forward to the resurrection of the dead..”
“..four..three..two..”
“..and the life of the world to come. Amen.”
“..one..zero. Convergence!”
Blinding white light seared everyone in the Labyrinth. Automatic shutters closed the observation pane, unable to keep the light from entering. It was as if a small sun had manifested itself in the Chair; no-one could stare at it, no-one could see where it emanated from. It was impossible to stare directly, hurtful; people cowering in their cubicles, averting their eyes from the light; an intense primal fear had overwhelmed everyone. Everyone except Kurt Schneider.
It was as if time had stopped right then and there, everyone feeling the blood in their veins freeze and their hearts stop. Not in awe, not in wonder and amazement, but in simple, primal fear, their instincts torn between running like hell and simply hiding away, melding with the floor, so as not to be found. Some had become one with the floor, others were kneeling low, poised to flee away from the light. Away from Schneider as well, who was smiling more brightly than ever before.
He paced himself to the light, with the determination and surety of a man who had prepared for this, who knew what he was looking at and welcomed it, instead of fleeing from it; he was not a lesser man. He answered to a greater calling, and these lesser humans had helped him, driven by lust, greed, and curiousity. ’How fitting,’ he thought to himself, while the standing form of Bob in his resplendent red Suit writhing with white and blue-hot flames motioned him to stop. Schneider complied, and fell on one knee:
“Hail, Giver of Light, Fallen One, Bringer of Change. I’m yours to command.”
The answer came with a concussioning blow of foul wind that reeked of sulphur, death and the unmistakable smell of corro
ding iron, as if a lake of blood had been carried along with it:
“Et quasi meridianus fulgor consurget tibi ad vesperam et cum te consumptum putaveris orieris ut lucifer.”
Schneider uttered the next words with trembling voice, as if his soul was being etched away from him, for real this time.
“Ave, Satanas.”
And then the form from whence the blinding light emanated, spoke with the unmistakable timbre of Bob, shallow yet unreal enough:
“Finally.”
Yar’s Plume
It was uncomfortably chilly on the night we saw each other last. I remember the methane snow flakes and the carbon ice, the first time around. The landscape around the Plume had unusually eerie feeling. Even a really long displacement such as the one I was going through now could not approximate the feeling. The memory somehow made the hair on my back rise. A distant, logical and pedantic part of my troubled, aching mind sought to inform the other part – the instinctive, impulse-driven part – that technically, I had no hair. No back for that matter either.
If I really had to be true and faithful to that stream of thought, I should have insisted on telling myself that I had no brain either, no corporeal existence of any kind. In a sense, it wasn’t even me waiting to re-integrate across the other end of the Plume. It was just a taste of me, or rather an idea of me, a gestatum of awareness: a complete mental state, a simulacra of my mind in even the tiniest brane-induced wormholes and superstring matrices that