The Last Human IV - 13 - A Living Universe (Patreon)

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***

It felt like his legs were full of jelly, his arms full lead, and his fingers were about to snap off. Gasping for breath, heart slamming in his chest, sweating from every pore—his arms, slick with it, his neck, his face, the backs of his legs—Poire finally hauled the sack to the Tower’s second floor.

The stairs kept going up, a spiral reaching into the dusky, dizzying heights above.

The Old Man was standing on the lowest step, one leg up, stretching his veiny calves. He frowned at the ragged, sweat-drenched Poire, as if he’d forgotten who he was. Then, he nodded behind Poire, “That’s far enough. Throw it on the pile.”

If Poire still had energy left to give, he might’ve wept with relief. He shuffled around, and gawped at the monstrous pile. There must’ve been thousands of them, tens of thousands—identical bags bulging with firm, gelatinous rocks, rising up like a landslide against the Tower’s inner wall.

“Why,” Poire gasped, “Did I—bring this—up here—when you—have—so many?”

“You think this is enough? Look up. What do you see?”

He wiped the sweat from his eyes, blinking and gaping up.

The spiral stairs went on. And on. A ceiling, shrouded in dust or cloud, hung far above.

“You should have—built an—elevator.”

The Old Man’s eyes crinkled with glee, “What makes you think I didn’t?”

Poire didn’t care how exhausted he was. He was going to punch him.

“Oh, don’t look at me like that,” the Old Man said. “There’s always a better way, isn’t there? You’re never going to forget this, now, I promise you. Might even thank me one of these days. ”

Poire hefted the bag in both arms, and threw it with all his anger at the pile. It wobbled and jiggled and rolled back down to his feet, spilling black gelatinous chunks across the stone floor. He kicked the bag, until it squelched out the rest.

“Feel better?” the Old Man asked.

“You already know the answer.”

“You’re right, I do,” his eyes sparkled with an almost sadistic glee, “And I also know this won’t be the last time you do that. Now, come on. We’re almost there.”

Poire wasn’t sure the Old Man understood the definition of almost. It would take most of a day to climb that many steps in his current state. Frankly, he wasn’t sure he had it in him. He tested himself on the first step, and a sudden wall of fatigue descended upon him. Why bother rushing? What’s the worst that can happen if I just sit here for a minute?

The Old Man’s voice was so close, it made Poire jump, “Don’t you want to be a god?”

“I never wanted that.”

“Well, neither did I. But it is being offered to you. Now, what choice will you make?”

The Old Man’s wiry beard lifted at the corners as he gave a gnarled smiled, and offered his equally gnarled hand out to Poire. Freckled and frail, with fingernails well past a little too long. Not exactly the sturdiest guide. Poire lifted his hand, and hesitated. Can he even support my weight?

What if I accidentally pull him over? What if he falls, and breaks his neck—

The Old Man’s palm shot past his, and yanked him up by the shoulder with enough force to make Poire squawk. They ascended the steps four at a time, with Poire scrabbling just to keep his feet touching the stone.

***

“Your past self can’t carry you the whole way. At some point, you have to let your new self do the heavy lifting. Think on that one. That’s a metaphor, or something.”

Then, the Old Man dropped him, leaving Poire alone on the spiral steps.

Now, all Poire could hear was the echoes of him, whistling several stories above. Taunting him.  Annoyingly, it worked—it made him want to try harder. To stop resting, to pick himself up, and to climb.

An hour, a day, or a lifetime later, Poire saw the darkness, pouring down the steps. It came from a hole in the ceiling above, like the inverse of a weak light, filtering through the darkest depths of the ocean. A shimmering beam of deep blue, then gray violet, then black.

His feet carried him faster than his eyes could adjust. Through the gloom he saw something that made his heart sink: the steps kept going up.

Towering columns spread out like a grid of trees planted by a machine, dark silhouettes outlined by ethereal, glowing lights that shimmered along the floor. Instead of stone, the floor was polished, like metal. Something about this place felt familiar, but wrong. Like everything was backwards.

“Hello?” Poire’s called.

“Hello—hello—hello,” his voice echoed back.

“Are you up here?”

“Up here—up here—up here.”

The air tasted stale, and pressed heavily around him. Far too quiet. Like someone had built this place, and forgot to add the motion of time.

Am I alone?

His heart quickened at the thought.

Did I imagine him?

Movement caught his gaze. Watery lights wavered between the pillars. Crystal-blue and rolling back and forth. Hundreds of pools of water, of a hundred different shapes and depths, whispered wetly in the gloom.

“Are you there?” Poire called out. There—there—there. He wandered between the pillars, gazing into the pools. This one was ankle deep. That one, a deep blue. And here, a pit descending into a terrible, inky blackness.

A bent shape lurched in the shadows, ducking from one pillar to the next. Poire threw himself against one of the columns, the hard coldness biting into his back. His heart caught in his throat.

“Not the best idea,” the shape said, scratching at his wiry beard. “To go wandering through the pools. Easy to lose your way, and it’s a long way to get lost.”

“What is this place?”

He could just make out the shape of the spiral steps, but no walls to speak of. No edge to the forest of towering columns and pools. The room could have marched away into infinity. He couldn’t shake that twisted sense of deja vu, of being back in his home universe.

“Oh, come now,” the Old Man’s legs clicked and cracked as he crouched, and dipped his hand in the water, “You’ve been here before.”

Poire joined him at the water’s edge. It was on the tip of his memory. He could remember someone in the water. Not swimming. Just lying there.

A head like a squid. Long, unnatural fingers.

Bursting from the waters, gasping and gibbering excitedly with an in-human voice—a digitized voice.

“The Historians had pools like this, in the Black Library. On the Light dam. They used them to see the future.”

“Not the future, Poire. They were looking into the past.”

Poire frowned at him. The Old Man frowned back. Shadows smoothed his wrinkles and darkened his wiry hair. It was almost like looking into a mirror.

“I don’t understand.”

“The Historians were looking at us, Poire. At humanity. They watched our dreams. Watched us … watch the future. Humanity alone bears this curse. If the xenos were diseased, as we were diseased, they would have withered out long ago. Aster understood this. He created the Historians to make sense of our past. It is only happy circumstance that they could also see, through our visions, the future. But this pool is not what it seems. This pool contains a god.”

“A god?” Poire twisted his head to see the hundreds of pools surrounding them. “How many are there?”

“Just the one. It is called Anu. Don’t ask me why. One of us must’ve liked the sound of the name.”

“Anu.” Poire whispered. Almost expecting to feel something.

“It exists here,” the Old Man cupped the water again, letting it trickle through his fingers and back to the pool, “And in all things. It is the reason we have any power at all. It is the reason we built the Tower. To seek the Light. To know the death of all things. This pool holds a mere drop of Anu’s form, but its power is unimaginable.”

Poire squinted at the Old Man, “Since when do we believe in gods?”

“Ah,” He wagged a finger at him, and made a face, as if Poire had just asked the best question that had ever been asked. “It was not so long ago. We were working on a theory, the two of us. Not you and me, but him and me. Well, it was his theory, but it’s mine now and—” he flapped his hand, as if he might wave away the confusion, “Anu is a living being. It makes up everything in this universe. The sky. The mountains. Every rock. Every plant. Every atom. Every iota of energy. It is all Light.”

“How could you know this?”

“Anu is an alien.”

“You mean, more alien than the avians and cyrans?”

“No. Yes, I mean. Very—those were not aliens. More like genetic experiments. Blood of our blood, in a sense. Or at least, atoms of our atoms.

“But this Anu, this is a true alien. The first being from another universe. At least, that was our theory. The Light leaked into our Universe through Scars. We blocked them up with the Das, and harnessed the Light’s power. And with the Light, we bridged the stars. We drew paths across the Universe. It should have been impossible, Poire. Instant communication, without quantum entanglement. Instant traversal, without breaking the laws of physics. There were properties of Light we were only beginning to untangle, before the disease came.

“Did you ever wonder how it could infect us all, so completely? Your Caretakers, hidden on far-flung worlds, locked away in pure isolation. It was Anu. It was the Light that dusted all creation. Infusing itself, existing in our universe.”

“Then why doesn’t our universe look like this one?”

“I don’t know. All I know is that the Light could not thrive in our universe. Perhaps, in time, the Light would’ve adapted. Or perhaps it was attempting to change our universe towards its liking. I don’t know. What I do know is that, here, Anu is everything. The sand, the bricks of this tower, the cells in your body. We’re connected to everything, and I don’t mean in some mystical sense. The atoms of this universe are alive. They think. They change.” The Old Man swiped his hands through the air, as if to catch some wriggling insect. Clouds formed in his fists, loose and white and flowing.

Poire’s eyes widened.

The Old Man threw his fists down, and the clouds splattered on the ground, becoming grains of white sand that skittered across the stone.

A thousand questions, and a thousand more, rushed to his lips, and got stuck. Only one slipped out. “How?”

“We’ve been working on a theory for as long as we’ve been here. Me and the other Poires. We think that Anu was once many beings. Like any species of intelligent being. All living together, perhaps in this universe or perhaps in another. But they grew in a different way. They coalesced into a single being. Becoming an endless, godlike amoeba, devouring all things and adding them to the whole.”

“If we’re made of this … Anu, if any of that is true, then why am I still me? And you, still you?”

The Old Man opened his mouth, and shut it with a frown. He shrugged. “No idea. But surely, we are devoured.”

“Then we’re standing inside of a colossal alien’s stomach?”

“I always thought of it more like a brain. Every atom, a kind of neuron. More compact, and far more adaptable. The Light, Poire. This is the Light. The same fuel we used to expand our presence across the stars—this is Anu. And we spread it across our universe. Not a single human untouched by it.”

“But we controlled it. We held it back with the dams.”

“Did we? It is always trying to break through. Do you remember Cyre? The Scar flared. If we had stayed, it would have swallowed the planet whole. It lives to consume. But the matter of our universe puzzled it. Slowed its progress. Until we started touching it. Playing with it. Then, it started eating us.”

“The Disease,” Poire whispered.

“The Disease,” the Old Man agreed.

“Khadam.”

“Oh, yes. Even her.”

“We have to tell her. We have to—”

“How do you expect to do that?” the Old Man said. “And more importantly, what is she going to do about it?”

Poire bit the inside of his mouth, and frowned at the floor. Wracked his brain, trying to come up with an answer. He felt like he had to do something, anything to help. But what could he do? He was stuck here. And it wasn’t like there was a way back … was there?

“Hmm,” the Old Man said. “You’re thinking about her, aren’t you?”

“She’s the last one,” Poire said. “If she’s infected…”

“You think it’s hopeless, then?”

“What can I do?”

The Old Man snorted. “You are alive, aren’t you? There can be no greater gift, no grander fortune. You are alive, and as long as you live, you have all the power you will ever need.”

“To do what?”

“To change fate.”

The Old Man kneeled down at the edge of one of the pools, and motioned for Poire to do the same.

“Waht do you see in there?”

This close, he saw bright specks trickling up from the bottom of the pools. Raining, like motes of dust in a sunbeam. Only, there was no sun. And this was no dust.

“Anu,” the Old Man said, almost reverently. “More pure than the rest of this matter,” he patted the stone floor.

“Why keep it here?”

“Look closer.”

Poire inched forward. “There’s shapes in the water.”

“It’s not water. Look closer, Poire.”

He came down until his nose was almost touching the water, straining his back with the effort. “I still don't—”

A hand, warm and leathery and strong despite its age, clamped around the back of his neck. Before Poire could fight for his balance, the Old Man shoved him into the pool. Poire yelped, and sucked down water, and flailed and kicked and swallowed another lungful. Instead of choking, he floated.

Disembodied. Somewhere else.

There was a woman. A human woman. She kneeled, just like the Old Man had done, before a great window, looking out on empty Space. Looking into an open Scar.

***

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