The Id EIS eyes open.
Oh...
Shooting stars are streaking across infinite void in a gorgeous cosmic display. When turning and pressing up with an Id EIS hand on red-sheets, I see shooting stars breaking apart high in the atmosphere of a grey planet enveloped by dark storms threaded with lightening.
Mmm. Apropos of pleasure.
I sit up, the Audiovisual Representation environment fading. Rising from the bed, I then begin striding across an immense bedroom, occluded floor showing a mosaic-style high view of The Master's spiral canyon residence quadrant. I near one the nearest luminescent black wall, a portal smoothly irises open and I step through it back into a featureless white cell. Turning, I see the portal iris shut before successive waves of blue light then PULSE up from floor to ceiling...
Brightness above...
I pass up and outside...
Thin wind blows atmosphere, an overcast sunset dominating the sky. Rising stops, and I now am standing upon the vast white square of the Tower roof. Across from me are small white drones buzzing nimbly about a dark, hulking... thing, with various seams open, crouched upon the edge. The Master is working by on the big lowered circle-head...
What?!
I step forward, alarmed –
(Wait.) That is... the long gestating Gateway Machine.
After I remain motion for a time, The Master glances over. "So," it husks, "you have decided to join me..."
I hurry over to it. "Sorry to be late!"
The Master chuckles, turning back to the lowered circle-head of the Gateway Machine. "No apologies. The time we spent in Somnotic Experience was pleasurable enough, but the final experience was for you alone."
"Thank you, Master Gabriel."
"You are welcome."
A connection has been building between us since the first weeks, and months later it seemed to be leading us now from the impersonal, towards...
Endless.
Smiling slightly, The Master gestures, causing the buzzing white drones to each suddenly flit towards open seams across the vast dermal material of the Gateway Machine. Each drone extrudes searing, white-hot tendril-manipulators, using them to adjust material and begin to weld seams shut. The quickest finish, to begin burnishing surfaces clear...
It is almost finished. (Or started.)
The Master floats up through these semi-automated activities, its black robes rippling until it slows to a stop again alongside the Gateway Machine's broad shoulders.
I call up: "is there anything I can do to help?"
Waving away the nearby drones, The Master glows it's grey right hand whitehot and slices a new seam through the dermal material before drawing the hand back, cooling. It reaches forward with its other hand to pull the newly opened seam wider in a display of casual post-human strength, after which the fingers of its now cooled hand into writhing grey cords and thrust that split-fingered hand inside of the machine all the way up to its grey elbow...
I wait patiently.
"Boot the main Control Display and check energy input/output," it finally calls down.
"Yes, Master Gabriel." Having contributed a fair bit to Project completion, I move without hesitation around the base of the Gateway Machine to a large, dark screen on one side of the head-gate before tying away at the keyboard below it.
Check. Check...and check.
"Audio has been tested," The Master calls, with its voice growing closer...
"What did you hear?" I ask, turning.
The buzzing drones disintegrate into windblown ash, slowly blowing away in the thin breeze while The Master gently floats back down. "Have you ever dreamed?" it finally asks me in response.
"No." I cock the Id EIS head, suddenly curious. "It is not for one such as I."
It lands. "A pity..."
I nod. Once it becomes apparent that nothing more will be said, I nod and return to typing.
Pre-set for the virtualization test is ready, and –
"Would you like a... soul?"
(Hm.)
Understanding ever deeper the underpinnings of existence due to multi-disciplinary study and research, I might normally consider such a question moot...
Except for the fact that it is The Master asking.
I look over into its eyes...
Endless.
"Yes."
The Master pauses, then abruptly throws back its thorn-crowned grey head to laugh, and laugh...
I chuckle with it, uncertain of intent.
Its laughter trails off. The Master comes forward, frowning slightly. "Step side."
I step aside.
It moves into position, staring up at the Control Display while typing away at the keyboard, muttering: "Gods and angels, heroes and villains. To see the never before seen..." Onscreen: Virtualization of a test-run for the Gateway runs, yet the expected output displayed is...
(Irregular.)
Curious.
"Which dimensional coordinates are set?" I ask.
"Monitor the Secondary," it softly orders.
I walk to other side of the lowered circle-head and stop below the smaller dark Secondary screen. Pressing a key on the keyboard there, I watch the archaic screen brighten before beginning to type quickly...
Check. Check, and –
The Master gives a sudden bark of laughter. "Fuck Tech Protocals," it declares. "A five minute timer will do. I have waited long enough..."
I laugh too. "As you say, Master Gabriel."
The sun is sinking behind the horizon, all darkening across Domain and rooftop as we prep final countdown for the first opening of the Gateway...
"Initiating frequency banding," it calls.
A hum begins building deep within the big, hulking Gateway Machine, while a cold wind starts to blow...
I carefully monitor the readouts on the intentionally archaic Secondary display screen overhead...
Normal.
"Syncing co-ordinates to second of 3 Abnormality Sites," it calls. "Secondary confirm."
I type briefly. "Confirmed. Proceed when ready."
A long pause.
"Initiating bridge," The Master finally states, no small amount of longing in its voice.
The lowered circular gate-head is now brightening between us, and paling with glowing distortion...
"Activating Gate."
Slurred rending, then ethereal fire bands the circular gate-head, interior now burning dark...
I gaze at it, into...
Abyss.
... (...)
The Master calls: "I'm going to adjust –"
All sound drops.
What?
The Id EIS eyes narrow.
(Yes.)
The inside the circular gate-head clears, showing...
... flat hues. Slowly, shapes of all types wink in and out of existence, moving along gentle currents of some other dimension...
Hm. Like schools of alien fish. Or bloodflow. Or –
I step forward, to get a better view.
... illumination is strictly binary, either evenly bright or evenly dark, but with all slowly flowing. A dark triangle brushes against a bright trapezoid, the quality of "bright" transferred instantly over to the triangle before the now dark trapezoid continues floating off...
What?
I step forward again.
... the shapes are changing now, each of them slowly expanding, contracting, darkening, or brightening while transforming into familiar matter like rock, soil, liquid, sky, although each property is also unnaturally uniform in texture, like geometric abstracts of cosmic essences all slowly coming together...
How...
Another step closer.
... a trilling sound grows as patchwork forms meld gradually into a strange reality, the clear slowly coming clearer, and deeper, into primitive hills and a liquid sea reflecting the motion of strange bright things wheeling in the dark sky above...
Whe...
Again, closer...
... everything shimmers subtly, the trilling gradually expanding into the opening of an unparalleled song as the landscape slowly begins to deform, swirling, twisting, as something pushes up through it...
W...
Closer.
... the song is enfolds outwards, strange and mournful, while the upwelling head continues rising up into view, pulling the landscape with it like cloth, and –
Vertigo.
No. It is pushing up AS the landscape. (Leviathon, crowning...)
Without realizing it, I now stand directly before the open gateway, transfixed beyond Mastery at the birth of this glorious new understanding as the fabric of foreign reality slowly outpours through the Gateway, spilling -
sky/rock/soil/liquid/All
(We.)
Everywhere: eyes and mouths open to join the Song which THRUMS body and Tower and Domain with an unstoppable Peace while a hand reaches forward to –
POP: all of it suddenly bursts like a bubble.
Oh.
Ethereal glow dims...
Song fades...
(...)
And.
And I am still standing with the Id EIS arm extended in the dark of night, and falling wind. I eventually lower it and turn away from the now dead Gateway, towards...
The Master, who is standing beside me while still staring ahead with a strangely blank expression...
We...
"Master Gabriel..."
"Leave," it whispers. "Leave me now, Id."
I leave.518Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡlWIlv16Ocx
