John wasn’t unaware of what was going on around him. He knew his team was struggling to find a way to deal with the Partlow and he watched their first, ineffectual efforts with a wry amusement. His new perspective was making it hard to engage emotionally with what was happening.
He could see what could be and what might have been. The Void creatures they’d slaughtered on Bob World One had been unwilling conscripts, just like himself. The Void and the Alliance used the same system in different ways. The Alliance gave everyone powers and let them fight it out whereas the Void subsumed a species, creating a single potent sentient being and converting the rest of the population into mindless slaves capable of rapid biological advancements.
They converted Concepts from Outside into fuel for material beings to achieve abilities that defied the basic laws of the universe. It had been enlightening to realise that pre-system human science hadn’t been far off the truth. The insane powers humanity had developed since the Advent were in direct contradiction of reality and wholly dependent on exploiting the Outside. Pushing the infinite into the finite voided the natural order.
He knew who his enemies were, perhaps for the first time since those golden letters had appeared before his eyes. The system was a farm for those glowing motes of light and darkness he had met when he died. The motivations of those beings were still unknown to him, despite his vast new perception.
John understood Magic’s role in his current situation. The killings and infiltrations the half-man had carried out without the knowledge of the other Monarchs had all been aimed at creating a being like John. John would kill him when they went home and he knew Magic had known that would be the price, one Magic had opted to pay willingly.
He struggled to narrow his perception, to bring himself back to the here and now, as far as that was possible anymore. His eyelids flickered open revealing empty orbs that contained a burning spark of purple fire that stared at the sky from the field of force he was laid out on. He drew a deep breath and the scents of an unspoiled world mingled with those of the fires and destruction the Carnival had wrought over the last few days as they attempted to complete the Systems mission.
The sounds overwhelmed him more than the scents. He could hear them all at once. It was like hearing echoes at the same time as the original sound. Yells, explosions, the susurration of the breeze and the almost inaudible chittering of the Partlows merged into a deafening symphony.
It took him another ten minutes to wrestle his hearing back into something resembling its old form. During that time he came to terms with how his sense of touch had changed. The armour prevented the wind from touching his skin but he felt it anyway, blending in with the physical contact his skin shared with his power armour. He no longer needed armour so with a flex of willpower to use his bridge to the Outside, he unmade it.
“Dad!” yelled Evie as John rose into the air, his armour being banished to the Outside like mist dispersed by a strong wind. Her yell distracted him and he lurched in the air. He wasn’t using teleportation to hover in place, he had simply altered his reality to stand where he wanted to.
In his weird vision he could see the Partlow swarming below, they couldn’t hide from him. Their abilities couldn’t affect inorganic material so Doris still stood strong despite their increasingly inventive efforts to affect the machine. Strange flows of energy were being constructed and shaped through their bodies to try and apply their life stealing powers to the robot.
He blinked his empty eyes and the alien constructs fell apart as he cut them off from the Outside. His impossible gaze swept across the rest of the aliens and he cut them off from the source of their abilities. They were now reduced to what they had been before. Sentient gas clouds across the land below him began to shriek at frequencies normally only detectable by IR spectroscopy.
A decision presented itself to his abstract mind. He could see the myriad paths that his choices might lead to. On the one hand he could unmake these new conscripts. In a way it would be the merciful choice, their lives under the system would consist of artificial conflict for the rest of their species existence.
Removing them from the System was also possible but that would be leaving them to the mercy of other members of their species who retained their powers. The Partlow were not a peaceable race, even their reproduction involved stealing gases from another of their race until they had enough to divide into smaller versions of themselves. Stripping them of their power would lead to far more gruesome deaths for these creatures than being unmade from their own perspective.
He made his decision. The Partlow vanished into a pocket dimension that replicated their own world. He stole their powers to provide the Conceptual energy to create it and sealed it behind them.
“John, what did ye do with the feckers?” demanded Reg.
“Sent them away.” John’s voice was flat.
“John!” Vic barrelled into him while still on fire and bounced off, unable to move him in the air despite arriving at high speed. He raised a hand in a flash and rested it on the back of her armoured neck to steady her. The flames died away quickly as she realised she should be burning him. “How are you not hurt?” she whispered, pulling back before flinching as she met his eyeless gaze.
“Everything is contained in me,” he replied as his mouth quirked into a facsimile of a smile.
“”Dad?” asked Evie as she hovered next to him. “What happened to you?”
“Gazed into the infinite.”
“What the hell is wrong with you John?” demanded Sam from Evie’s platform. “Speak normally you idiot!” The woman had recovered from her near miss with the attack the Partlow had landed on one of her clones but she was still shaky on her feet, leaning on Raoul who propped her up with one arm.This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.
“Finite infinity is impossible.” John scowled and the world seemed to crackle with purple lights for a moment. “Better? I… I am still an I. Strange. I’m losing the bridge. No, the bridge can’t accept a ‘me’. Not now. But if it can at any now then it should now as well!” He wobbled and fell down onto Evie’s platform, the purple fire in his eye sockets flickered and grew dimmer. Then it stabilised as a faint caricature of its former brightness.
“What the fuck happened to you John? You don’t have biometrics anymore, you sure as shit aren’t human anymore. Is it even you?” demanded Bob over the comm link.
“You showered us with petunias,” said John.
“What? Are you mad now?” Bob asked, his voice worried.
“Gazing into the infinite, must bend rather than break. I must bend rather than break,” John replied.
“When we first met you smashed a flower display and we got covered in petunias,” said Evie quickly. “Can’t you talk properly?” she concluded, turning her helmet from Bob to her dad.
“Transmission of knowledge is the purpose. So finite,” John said unhappily. He was beginning to adapt, he could feel himself becoming the limited being he had used to be once again. With the change he could feel the new power slipping away. Not completely but he had been almost a god in those few minutes and now he was little more than he had been before. The threads of fate made it clear this was the right thing to do but he could no longer follow the flow of time into the past and future, he had to trust the knowledge his god-self had left in his mind.
“You are no longer what you were,” said Felix.
“Were. What are you now?” asked Felicity coldly.
“I’m- I’m not sure,” John coughed as he drew himself up, straightening his back as he looked at the twins. One thing that he had left himself was knowledge of the pair''s future. They would be the first to understand. “I’ve dealt with the locals.”
“How?” demanded the twins simultaneously.
“I put them somewhere else.”
Mission Status: Complete
Human antagonists: 10
Partlow Survivors: 0
You will be returned to the Kipragtsek shortly.
“What about the Essence?” demanded Evie.
“We don’t need it,” John replied.
“You’ve tricked the system?” wondered Flash.
“That isn’t possible,” said Felicity flatly.
“It sees everything. Hears everything,” added Felix.
“I know. It’s in us and we can’t lie to it. I’ll have to hope you can trust me. We should dig in, shortly doesn’t mean what the system thinks it means,” said John. His eyes flared brightly for a microsecond and he appeared on the ground near Doris.
“What were they?” asked Bob.
“The Flerubles?” he coughed and righted his mind, using his new strength robbed him of his coherence temporarily. “The locals were gas creatures. They had no diversity like in humans. They all had basically the same power,” said John absently. “I’m going to open a portal back to Earth.”
“Won’t the barrier stop it? I haven’t been able to connect to the entanglement communicator.”
Purple light flickered around John and a portal flared open. The azure event horizon was surrounded by a purple nimbus. A drone approached the field and cocked its head to look at John.
“What’s up with the new colours?” it asked.
“I’m not sure,” John lied. He couldn’t explain the truth to his friends and family, not yet. He needed to get back to the ship and get help with the bridge. That was the most important thing he’d learned during his temporary transcendence.
“Anything else I should know?” asked the bot suspiciously. John shook his head.
“Go on, go check how things are back home.” John knew some of it from his memories of the threads of fate but he had to let the rest of the team find out naturally. As the drone moved to enter the portal, raising a hand to test the barrier cautiously, another drone barrelled out and knocked it over, leaving the pair in a tangle of metallic limbs.
“Ah, hell,” said Bob over the comm links. “Things went south back home. Jesus, they went as far south as you can get!” he cursed as the robots straightened themselves out and rose to their feet.
In answer to the babble of questions that spewed from the team, Bob quickly explained the outline of Mindscar''s rebellion and Belisarius’ scorched earth attack on the planet.
“It’s a mess. A lot of the survivors have been moved off of Earth, either to Mars, the Moon or Bob World One,” the drone finished. It took a few minutes of grim silence for the team to gather themselves, the shock at the events back home having knocked the wind out of their sails.
“So the portal to BW1 stayed up?” asked Flash. “How are things there?”
“Crowded. There were a few tens of millions left after Belisarius blew up half the world. About half have moved out. The rest are traumatised and dangerous, turning on each other. It’s like Belisarius managed to flick a switch and create millions of Scunners!” replied Bob.
“Or Mindscar is still running sound and causing havoc,” offered Sam. “When I get that bitch in my sights…”
“What are Magic and Life doing?” asked Vic. They had already been assured that Ryn and her team were fine, it had been the first question Vic spat at the drone in panic and rage.
“Magic has gathered a lot of people into some kind of pocket dimension. He won’t let them out and won’t take them off world. Life is spending his time clearing people of radiation poisoning before they go through the portals. John… they want you to close most of the portals. Just leave the off world ones and I agree with them,” said Bob unhappily.
“What about the other survivors?” John asked.
“They’ve gone mental! Not the technical term I’m sure but it hits all the highlights. Wayfaire is a radioactive battleground of comic book supervillains. The fuckers are staying well away from the Bunker for now but that’ll change when one of them gets strong enough they think they’ll stand a chance. If we close the portals at least the rest of the bastards can’t come and join in,” Bob replied.
“Ok.” John paused for a moment as he felt for the portals in the back of his mind. They existed like itches in his consciousness and he switched off all of them bar the ones linking Wayfaire''s off world colonies to the depths of the Bunker. “What about Wayfaire? How many survivors were there?”
“Not many. Some of the outer suburbs did ok but the explosions propagated through your- uh the portals.”
“So anywhere in the line of a portal got nuked?” asked John bitterly. He knew it already but some kind of preternatural control overrode him and forced him to act as though this was a shock. Or maybe his memories were coming back to him as it was revealed, allowing him to be sincere? He could no longer gauge his feelings. He felt trapped by a terrible purpose and every action had to lead him down that bleak road.
“Not exactly nuked. It was some kind of knock off plasma reactor supported with various updated old world nuke power plants. The effect was much the same though,” Bob’s voice was bitter and angry in their ears.
“We need to get home!” snapped Vic. “We can jump to level ninety two right now! John, we need to get back to Ryn!”
He embraced his wife and pulled back to meet her eyes then he nodded, his face a mask of pained frustration. He ignored the fear in her eyes when they met his empty sockets.
He could take them home right now. However he knew if he resumed his transcendence at this point he’d be lost forever. The system would not react kindly and it would attack them mercilessly. If they managed to survive that he would become so alien in comparison to his friends none of them would understand his actions and there would be no way back. He needed time to stabilise and recover his old personality before fully using the power again.
He simulated a love and affection that he couldn’t currently feel to comfort his wife as he focussed on integrating his bridge to Outside into his normal personality.